This is the fourth time in the last ten or fifteen years that, after doing some research, I've come to the conclusion that I probably have Asperger's Syndrome. The confusing thing is that now, at the age of twenty-seven, I appear to be pretty much NT. No one around me even believes me when I mention that I probably have Asperger's. I think that if they had known me when I was a child, they wouldn't have any trouble believing it. My parents certainly believe it.
I'm not really sure what I'm trying to express, here. I guess I would like to know if there's anyone else out there like me- people who had Asperger's Syndrome as children but were pushed so hard by their parents that they've learned to blend in almost perfectly.
In some ways, I'm grateful to my mother for what she did, although I certainly resented it strongly enough while she was doing it. I also feel a great sense of loss. I am just starting to feel pride in the way I was. I may have been an extremely "strange" child, but I had incredible talents and insights.
If I really put some conscious effort into it, I think I can pass myself off as merely a "quirky" neurotypical. I don't like it though, and it certainly doesn't feel natural, which is why I believe that I have Asperger's. I hide most of my AS traits though when I'm around people (stimming, talking to myself, arm-flapping, etc.), so I don't think anyone I know in real life would suspect me having it.
Do you miss it?
I mean, it's not just that I miss the advantages of Asperger's. It's still there anyway- I still struggle with the difficulties with which it presents me, and I still enjoy the positive aspects, but both are buried beneath a deep NT facade.
It would be really nice if people were more understanding though. There are some quirks that I simply can't hide, and people judge me harshly because of them. If the people around me knew how far I've come, then I think they would be much more forgiving.
I like the fact that I'm Aspie but I do make quite the effort to appear NT, and so far, it's been successful. Some people probably wouldn't believe me if I told them about my AS/HFA. I generally avoid telling people, and in a couple of years once I'm finished college, I'm going to get my diagnosis removed. Actually having AS/HFA is not what caused so many problems during my childhood, but having the official diagnosis of AS/HFA is what did.
My Doctor has told me to ignore typical assessments for anxiety and depression because they do not really apply to the way I think and I agree with her. So I am never perscribed drugs.
Every so often I do have to go to some serious meetings with senior managers so when that happens I do try hard to appear 'normal'. I usually manage OK, but it's exhausting.
Now I'm 30 I really couldn't care less what people think about me. I do sometimes like to ask opinions on the way I'm treated.
My parents never pushed me in childhood but I was generally considered too serious and intense to enjoy things.
I think the present and the future is more important than the past.
What is normal is not necessairly good. It can be quite pathological. Last year a National Public Radio report on autism revealed that a woman who "flapped her hands" when she was nervous was told to do something more normal, such as stepping outside to take a cigarette break. That is just one counterexample of the legitimacy of normal.
Smoking cigarettes is one of the worst things that a person can do to their own body. My grandma's four siblings and my grandma's parents all smoked, and they all died a long time before my grandma died. My grandma (my mother's mother) lived to be almost 80 (died peacefully while watching TV), but she was old and skinny and in terrible shape. My aunt (my mother's older sister) died of lung cancer last year, she was just 55.
I try so hard to look and act like a NT that i can only do so for short periods of time. then i need to be alone and wind down for sometime.
It is also true that second hand smoke causes many deaths. This is just one of many examples that it is not always good to be normal, especially when it involves sharing unnecessary problems that the rest of society suffers.
Thankfully, my mom is an eccentric herself,and always taught me that it's OK to be different--in fact, she might've overdone it; she has such a disregard for others' opinions that she often alienates them. However, my mom is happier the way she is than she would be if she were more accomodating; so I think it's probably OK that way. She has a lot of Aspie traits, anyhow, though she refuses to believe AS isn't a disability and therefore refuses to admit that either she or I could possibly have AS. Still, whether you call it "AS" or "eccentricity", being raised to think it's OK is better than being forced into the NT mold. Unfortunately, she was the only person in my life who taught me I was OK--everyone else pretty much assume that not only was I weird, but my mom must be insane. (She does struggle with depression a lot, but so do I--what else is new?)
Aspie parent + Aspie child = Lower social skills + higher self esteem.
At least that's the way it worked out for me.
Society has a long history of proof that what is normal is often terribly diseased. One example was the pathological phobia of sexual matters at the dawn of the Twentieth Century. Dr Kellogg had the public believing that erections cause massive brain damage by sucking nutrients out of the spinal cord thereupon starving brain cells to death. People wore spike lined horns to bed to prevent nocturnal "flagpoles to an early grave" and nocturnal "pollutions" and a machine that was suppose to put an end to "flagpoles" electrocuted one patient. This was accepted as normal and yet today enlightened and educated people know that it was the diseased product of junk science and religiously inspired superstition. Drooling love songs that tell the stupidest what they want to hear about "falling in love" with instant gratification and what to expect in marriage and they are a big part of a 58% divorce rate. There are many more counterexamples to the idea that what is normal is of any use as a guide on how to live.
What's repulsive is that the Big Group always insists that the Little Group act/appear/behave like a member of the Big Group. Parents can be the WORST about this -- especially when you're out in public. "Act normal! Straighten up! Stop acting weird!"
Once in a gay shop I saw a button that I loved; "I don't mind straight people, as long as they act gay in public." When you reverse the big group / little group status, it shows the absurdity of expecting any group to act like another.
This is the fourth time in the last ten or fifteen years that, after doing some research, I've come to the conclusion that I probably have Asperger's Syndrome. The confusing thing is that now, at the age of twenty-seven, I appear to be pretty much NT. No one around me even believes me when I mention that I probably have Asperger's. I think that if they had known me when I was a child, they wouldn't have any trouble believing it. My parents certainly believe it.
I'm not really sure what I'm trying to express, here. I guess I would like to know if there's anyone else out there like me- people who had Asperger's Syndrome as children but were pushed so hard by their parents that they've learned to blend in almost perfectly.
In some ways, I'm grateful to my mother for what she did, although I certainly resented it strongly enough while she was doing it. I also feel a great sense of loss. I am just starting to feel pride in the way I was. I may have been an extremely "strange" child, but I had incredible talents and insights.
I am actually extremely resentful of anyone who tries to push me into "neurotypical" methods of thinking or living. I have decided, after 25 years of life, that it is just not what I want. It was always subconsiously this way, but now that I can express the sentiment quite well, it is there on a conscious level.
I want to be seen as normal, in some ways, but at the same time I want to be allowed to think like me, most of the time, and not the interface I have developed to analyze and emulate neurotypical behavior. This way I can remain my imaginative/creative self, as opposed to having these pronounced eccentricitied "pounded out of me" so I can become like a strong adult male.
It's probably why therapy does not get along with me--I don't have any goals to become normal or neurotypical.
I am stubbornly, and proudly, Aspie, or whatever I am, and I am not going to change.
I am only on AFF to explore coping mechanisms, not to agree with others who say I should work toward becoming a proper adult.
I want a lot of the things that "proper" NT adults have, but I tend not to want them as badly. I prefer to be my oddball self, more than being fake and blending in with people I just don't understand, or enjoy.
If you don't like what I said above, then, oh well.
While I was preparing for adult life I was taught to emulate what was considered normal and conventional, which I had endeavoured to do. I had been institutionalized in a detention home for just short of 2 years after getting myself expelled from grade school, both public school and several private schools and after I had studied how to emulate normal people and I had paid my debt to society.
But the demands on what you can say and what you can think were so boundless that in time I discovered that they were unreasonable. All discourse had to be in the present style of pop junk culture songs, grievously limiting the depth of any idea that could be expressed. If the idea were not commonly thought, that was not tolerated by the fascism of totalitarian democrasy. No matter what I attempted, some joke I might make or something I would wear that was not perfectly fashionable enough would cause the world around me to fulminate fuchsia face iricundulous. But I tolerated things that were far worse than the green socks or the expression in discourse that had not been hitherto heard. I put up with cigarette smoke thinking that I would not be hated. I tolerated the ugly music in an attempt to get along. Then, after having one door slammed in my face after another I woke up one morning and resolved to quit being a good ***, to quit letting people who could not tolerate lime green using my body as their sewage receptacle for their smoke or my mind for their music the way a prostitute lets society use her body as a recepticle for the semen of dirty low class people.
I was arrested a few times for defending myself from the forms of rape society inflicts because it is normal to break peoples spirits purely for the recreation of showing who is boss. But I lost nothing because I would have never been allowed to have a career or a family anyway.
It does not pay to attempt to emulate what is normal especially when normal can be so dirty so often,
While I was preparing for adult life I was taught to emulate what was considered normal and conventional, which I had endeavoured to do. I had been institutionalized in a detention home for just short of 2 years after getting myself expelled from grade school, both public school and several private schools and after I had studied how to emulate normal people and I had paid my debt to society.
But the demands on what you can say and what you can think were so boundless that in time I discovered that they were unreasonable. All discourse had to be in the present style of pop junk culture songs, grievously limiting the depth of any idea that could be expressed. If the idea were not commonly thought, that was not tolerated by the fascism of totalitarian democrasy. No matter what I attempted, some joke I might make or something I would wear that was not perfectly fashionable enough would cause the world around me to fulminate fuchsia face iricundulous. But I tolerated things that were far worse than the green socks or the expression in discourse that had not been hitherto heard. I put up with cigarette smoke thinking that I would not be hated. I tolerated the ugly music in an attempt to get along. Then, after having one door slammed in my face after another I woke up one morning and resolved to quit being a good ***, to quit letting people who could not tolerate lime green using my body as their sewage receptacle for their smoke or my mind for their music the way a prostitute lets society use her body as a recepticle for the semen of dirty low class people.
I was arrested a few times for defending myself from the forms of rape society inflicts because it is normal to break peoples spirits purely for the recreation of showing who is boss. But I lost nothing because I would have never been allowed to have a career or a family anyway.
It does not pay to attempt to emulate what is normal especially when normal can be so dirty so often,
I think you see my point 
Be what you are, not what others want you to be. Emulation is all good and well, it's great for coping mechanisms if you have to be in an NT environment, but you don't want to "become" your Interface.
I think that can cause more problems than it solves, IMHO.