I wasn't diagnosed until I was 16 and in my experience, having a neurofunctional disability is sort of the kiss of death to life as I know it. Ever since I was diagnosed I've been held accountable for being different, been blamed and scapegoated for everything problematic because I'm the different person and I've had a very, very aggravating battle to make a living as an autistic person. What's worse is that I'm holding myself accountable for being autistic as well and I don't know how to navigate the very subtle differences between me and everybody else. It feels so arbitrary that when normal people make requests they get things sorted out and when I make requests we're pinning it to my diagnosis regardless of who I am and what I'm like. Does anybody else feel like their person is overruled by this condition?
If only I was normal: I wasn't diagnosed... - Asperger's Support
If only I was normal
Hello VenusoftheNorth
I remember those early days of being diagnosed when I was 37 and being left to work out where the goalposts stood, bit it was only when I realised that I had always been autistic, so in fact the only thing that had changed was my perception of myself. Believe me, you do not want to be normal and even though you may feel that you want to be someone else.... you are special in ways that these "Users" could not comprehend, let alone deal with having it as a part of who they are now....
Your condition does not overrule the sentient part of you that you speak of when you address yourself as "I".... the condition and you are interwoven together in a form of symbiosis that it sounds as though you have yet to accept. I recall trying to separate myself from my condition only to find it is as much a source of my strengths as well as my weaknesses. In time I grieved and regressed and then one day accepted that I am still me, regardless of what I now knew... I did not catch this condition or have it forced onto me by some infection... I was always autistic and it's how others understand, empathise, interact and treat you that is what is really the part that is out of your control... the rest is up to you. If these others have a habit of just marginalizing you or treating you as some kind of unknown element.... do what I did and remove them from the picture.. the last thing anyone would want is to be treated unfairly and if this is what they are doing.... go to your employer HR dept and have them deal with it! The government is on your side and if these shallow minds are causing you pain in any way or making a mockery of you, then it is abuse and you just go right on down the police station and report what is going on!
You cannot see yourself as being to blame for being autistic ..... it was never a decision anyone made to make you the way you are, so in reality you cannot hold yourself accountable for being gifted ! It is both a sign that you might need some additional support as well as an unrealistic burden that you place on your shoulders..... yes being responsible for your actions, but being accountable for your condition is you being unfair to yourself !
The real reason mankind has had made such leaps of creativity is down to the few special minds that are beautiful.... autism is a gift and not a curse okay! Everyone wants to be normal, but it took me 10 years to work out that normal is just another way to say what is acceptable to the masses..... Once upon a time being gay was wrong in the eyes of normal and yet now.... it is just another permutation of humanity. It became a normal thing to be gay and this is just an example of how mankind is always changing what normal is..... so how can anyone be normal when it is a volatile state in the first place?
Be proud you are unique in ways most people will never get the chance to understand and also be proud of who you are, because if a mundane were suddenly in your shoes..... by heck would they cave to the condition....you have got this far and there is such potential in you that regular people will never know... be yourself and learn to accept that you and what you are, is who you always were €8^>
Learn what your strengths are, your limitations, your weaknesses, your passions...the part of you that you have yet to understand... When you know what you can and cannot do, you can then move forward instead of just let everyone blame you for their own shortcomings. People who use you as their scapegoat are toxic towards you and also they are hiding from themselves and their own failures instead of owning them... When humans leave school, they want to be called adults..sounds like you are surrounded by children in grown up bodies from my perspective... Please -please- please do not give up on you ! There are 4 billion odd other people willing to give up on you, so be the one who is rooting for you as few others are capable or willing to be there for you! I am not saying you are on your own out there... you just need to start by taking a step back and discovering yourself for all that you are and that is gifted 
I'm very grateful for such a proper reply. It's very helpful to me that someone is thinking and reasoning with me through this. However, I live in Sweden and here the condition is largely treated with confusion. Autistic people have no rights and everything I've done so far has somehow come down to my condition, regardless of what the matter was.
Moody? Autistic. Lonely? Autistic. Unemployed? Autistic. Homeless? Autistic. Gets a cold? Autistic. It's ridiculous really.
Myself i just evolved as time went along always looking/watching/learning things then use good bits to your advantage. and you can't please all the people all the time!
Sure, but a lot of them people make decisions about my living conditions and a lot of people are plenty dissatisfied with me in general. It's one thing having one or two or three people compulsively rain on your parade, but in my case it's half damn society at large.
But if your stronger and also speak your mind you'll find a change in there ways! might take a while but happens i just be myself and just never worry about others as if there picking there not worth knowing as plenty of people that are better.
Learn your strengths also so find out what your good/better at and focus on them.
There is only one person that can effect changes and improve things and that's you in the cold light of day yes i know you might not like to hear that but it's something ive learn't by.
But because of that i have people that respect me and my info/advice as one friend says you just give a straight answer and it is what it is no BS.
I think it's delusional to believe one person is going to change it all by being bitchy enough. It ain't going to happen, I'm stuck adapting to a system that wasn't made for any of us. I'm simply not the changing world kind of person and whatever leverage I have now is lost trying to change everybody else. After all, it's my problem though somebody else created it for me. I'm not thinking this way because I'm helpless, I'm not thinking this way because I've given up, but if I have any chance at all left of doing something reasonable in my lifetime, we're all going to have to be realistic of what they battlefield really looks like.
I was the other way round. I wasn't diagnosed till 53 and I can assure you that not being diagnosed doesn't mean you don't get blamed for stuff. It's still your fault, but the difference is that rather than being someone with a diagnosis that has a condition, you drift into being an awkward sod with an attitude problem.
It does feel that you're the normal one and everyone ELSE is behaving strangely, but that's just how the condition is.
I don't feel the condition is separate from me. It's more that I am who I am and can't be otherwise, but the way I am is unacceptable to others. I have to keep apologising for it, as if I should be doing better. I have to keep adjusting to the requirements of others, even though it's them that should be adjusting to me.
Put it another way. If there was a cure, take these tablets three times a day for a month and it will gradually wear off and not come back, would you take them? It would fundamentally change who you are, how you think, how you communicate, how you behave. Most people with ASD wouldn't take it. I'd be sorely tempted, but I don't know who I'd be if I wasn't ASD, and I might not like me that way. I might not have played chess without it, I'd almost certainly never have done music, I'd be somebody else. In time you may come to understand subtle things your ASD has done for you, abilities you often don't value that it has given you, personality traits that can be a source of great strength that you may not have had or had as much.
It's absolutely NOT an easy condition to live with, people will frequently get absolutely exasperated with you and you'll often wish fervently that you didn't have it... but in ways that it's easy to miss, it is a two way street.
This is another helpfully well put row of arguments and I'm happy you took the time to reply. You may be right I wouldn't take the pills and you may be right about me being too young to appreciate the condition (in which case I'll grow into it) but it's nonetheless a very real feeling to me that given the choice, I'd much rather be an included nobody than an excluded somebody, neither of which is truthfully better than the other but valid anxieties for me to have for the time being.
But are the people not on the spectrum any better for or than it? No i don't think so there are still many A holes who will treat/class you as fodder to impinge on.
But most of the problems it isn't us it's them there insecurities and low being is so they try to push that on to others to make up for there lack of Balls for want of another word.
Used to know someone that would never go on the dance floor unless had a drink! but them and others would just watch so you'd think they was looking at you but now they was too insecure about themselves.
I knew i was when young well it was said in my notes but nothing ever said/done! But got diagnosed similar age to you but what i do now is look and think often instead of just doing things like would normally Question myself so think twice mind still do many things wrong but F im me doing my own thing and if don't like it's tough now these days.
Learnt with someone people no matter what you do/try your always wrong so it isn't me it's them.
Have a whole mixed bag of friend types some understand the spectrum while others don't and some sort of!
We were diagnosed with autism because something about us caused enough disruption in our local establishments we needed to be diagnosed to offer other people an explanation as to why or how or if we were different. Current social systems and the establishment is correctly designed to cater to "normal people", given most voters, consumers and users are on a normal spectrum. Blaming the issue on other people isn't helpful here, since we were diagnosed given problems other people don't have. The system is not to blame for my limited imaginative capacity. People aren't to blame for my lack of social skills and society isn't to blame for my repetitive behavioral habits. Had I been normal I'd have wanted the system to remain catered to "most of us", which does exclude people with cognitive conditions, because in truth, our failure of adapting to our surroundings is not somebody else's fault and so other people cannot be held accountable for not bringing us in when we're not bringing anything of value to their table. Simple math really.
I'm not saying there aren't system failures. I'm not saying "normal people" have treated minority groups in variety correctly. But the observable failures and the problems concerning people who are "different" and "normal people" are perfectly explainable. In which case I'm having problems accepting and allowing myself to be different on account of how my surroundings ARE affected by having to adapt to me, especially if I were to go the arsehole route of not adapting to them at all. My sitch is bearable to most because I've made a point of managing my condition so that it's as seamless as it gets to the establishment in which I dwell, but adapting all of society to these few hundred at a time that aren't doing the things I do to compromise is lunacy, in all honesty.
Look at it this way. Imagine you're an alien who's been granted a visa to live here. You're a different species, so although you look the same you don't think or behave the same way as the native humans. They often overlook the fact that you aren't the same species and that evidently irritates and frustrates you. But it is in the end their planet, not yours, and they could always tell you to climb back in your spaceship and go home... if you could remember where you parked it that is. Let's say you've forgotten where home originally was or how to get back there. All this will frequently be maddening, but do remember it's their planet. Try and be philosophical.
Implying that I have no legitimate place in the world because I was diagnosed autistic really isn't helping. I understand your attempt at making me feel better but truth is I happen to be human and this happens to be just as much my home as it is everybody else's.
I'm not saying you have no legitimate place in the world. What I'm saying is that usually you won't get any special consideration or allowance for having ASD, or you won't get enough. Wouldn't it be great if you did... and you may be luckier than I have been... but very likely there won't be any parting of the red sea, any team of specialists with clipboards telling you that they'll sort it and you'll be alright now. A specialist will tell you that you can't accommodate to people, they have to adjust to you because of your condition. If it happens, great; but don't expect it. You will often have to meet the world on its terms, not yours. Is that fair or right? of course it's not. It's just how the world often is. Sorry.
Isn't that quite precisely the argument I've made on my own a few times above?
I found that accepting the fact that I am autistic has made it easier to just move on. First people thought I was strange but that's OK because you know what, things they do are strange. I was diagnosed at 6 years old and then held back in school, competing in sports, and very few friends. I finally accepted that, yes, I am autistic and the only thing different now is that I'm not fighting myself. At 48, I just come right out and say, "hey, I'm ASD, and I'm going to do things differently then most people and you know, at 48, I don't care what they think. People are out there judging constantly because they are trying to make others look smaller so these people can feel bigger about themselves. Those same people are picking fun of others to get a rise. Their friends are usually insecure and follow their lead bully like little puppies so they can feel big too. Let them. Who cares. Be you. What's your specialty, what are you good at? Make it profitable and don't be homeless. Don't allow others to determine your ability to be successful in your own way.You can be different and still be a great person and feel bad for those narrow minded and insecure people who prey on others to make themselves stand out. I've said to those same people, " I'm ASD and do things my way, but you're an asshole with no reasonable explanation".
Life is short. Be you. Be free.. Enjoy life, help others when you can and respect other people's rights to be themselves but demand they respect you too. Agree to disagree, Don't be passive and easy to put down. Be strong. Be happy. Cheers
Somehow it appears some of above mentioned feelings come easier to some than others.
I wasn't diagnosed until I was 20 and I am currently 22. It is extremely annoying that there is one rule for me and another rule for everyone else. I am glad that I got diagnosed later rather early because of this. It was extremely annoying going trying therapist for social anxiety and being told it was autism. I had to go the long way and get a charity who could help. But it isn't only autism another condition that affects my physical health gets blamed for any illness. I have been sick several times from the wrong medication.
It is annoying but people think they know you more than you know yourself. Be assertive and point out that they wouldn't treat a 'normal' person this way. As someone who had learning difficulties, I learnt to do things out of pure spite (currently my degree)
It is difficult but you know yourself best!
(apologies for the English, not in my skill set)
It's kind of you to say so and I'm happy someone's relating. I wanted to know if I was alone feeling this way.
I think it is a pretty normal feeling not just for autism but for mental and physical health. But I agree it is good to have people to relate too!
My wife and I have suffered thru the case of a granddaughter being autistic. When my son and his former wife had a daughter and the mom found out her daughter was autistic, she did her best to keep her daughter away from her dad's side if the family. I believe she was 5 when diagnosed. The dad side if the family doesn't treat anyone in the family as What everyone calls "different". Our family believes in the everybody is the same mentality. The mom on the other hand made like her daughter was mentally challenged and therefore out her daughter in special education classes. The mom also made it a point so that we would stay out of her affairs with the granddaughter that she had several times falsely gotten the father arrested for sexual abuse, physical abuse of a child and he hadn't seen his daughter in over 5 years. He tried to get a visitation set up (social services would be in attendance) so we could at least visit her. The mom wouldn't have any of it. The mother sheltered our granddaughter so much that our 20 years old granddaughter functions as a 5 or 6 years old child. She is also now the ward of the state. This would t of have happened if the granddaughter grew up in a normal living family. The mom was so embarrassed to have a " child with problems",as she puts it, that she wouldnt not let our granddaughter function normally. Some times it's not fair to blame society for treating autism differently but to put it on the parent(s) because they are ashamed of their child.
Neither of my parents accepted my described diagnosis. I was raised and educated as if I was "normal" and I'm grateful for that. However, none of this has been particularly helpful in ensuring I'm self-reliant and functionally supporting myself, I've had to fight for that on my own instead of having an equal opportunity to do so like my neurotypical "peers". Survival and support is a struggle and I understand that some people expect life to be challenging, but my suffering has been perpetrated by, enforced and maintained by the very same people that claimed they were "helping me". Hopefully you understand that I take certain issue with those experiences and the people involved.
I don't blame you for your feelings.
I thank you for that
Im sure with the experiences you've gone thru gives you the feelings you have. I respect that.
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