I'm reading this book: Aspergirls right now. Well, only a few pages at a time actually, because it hurts to read it. The book is very supportive and as the subtitle says, intended to be empowering. But reading that other women with AS struggle with the same issues I do (and worse in some areas) kind of makes me feel that suckiness in life is inevitable for us. If we're very lucky, we will have a job that suits our intelligence. If we're extraordinarily lucky and manage to cram ourselves into the gender roles that society oppresses us with, then we may have a mate that we're happy with.

Most of us are not lucky at all. I've been able to keep a job for up to three years. Some have only been able to manage four months. And while I realize that this should give me cause to hope, what I see is that I am quite possibly on the outer margin of what I am going to be able to do....and I wanted more. I still want more. I am grateful for the job that I have, but do not want to spend my life in this position. The three days that I work leave me depleted, not very promising since we are talking about 5 hour shifts. :-/

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't take the cure even if one existed. I love who I am inside and normal people continue to seem quite bland and uninteresting, like unquestioning automatons for the most part. But when it comes to relating to the outside world, I feel defective. Perhaps there is some kind of depth to being normal that I cannot perceive; it doesn't look like much fun from the outside.

And so when I hear people tell me that their child, grandchild, etc has been diagnosed with AS, I always tell them it isn't the end of the world, that there are many very valuable things about being aspie, a lot of strengths, that their child should be loved and accepted for who they are. And I believe this.

But I'm so full of shit. Being aspie hurts. It hurts a lot. It means a lifetime of rejection, of social clumsiness, of offending people you never liked to begin with and hurting those that you love without ever meaning to and not knowing how to fix any of this. It means that people find you creepy and off-putting when the truth is that you're not only harmless but terribly vulnerable. If you're quiet they think you're stupid; if you open your mouth and talk a little bit, you come across as a show off without meaning to and additionally, they say that since you're so smart, you aren't doing enough whatever it is they think you should be doing, as if raw intelligence is all it takes to succeed in life. The sense of being alienated haunts us throughout life. It hurts. It really, really hurts.

Sigh....I think that maybe I am not ready to read this book right now and should return it to the library.