The Curse of Being Apparently Normal

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I wonder if anyone else feels like this. I certainly hope so or I will continue to feel utterly alone. I have ASD (diagnosed as Asperger's) and I am almost 47 years old (3 weeks until my birthday - diagnosed at 43). I have always known that there was something "wrong" with me. I couldn't reconcile peoples' stated views with how they behaved and so on. I had a reasonably "normal" childhood that was undoubtedly helped by having a brother and cousins in school with me who helped me avoid being bullied - I am also quite a big guy so physical bullying was rare. I had an epiphany at the age of 13 when I realised that playing up on my size would not only keep bullies at bay but would also gain me allies. I spent my school life with one foot in the geek camp and another in the regular camp. I moved to a different country to go to school when I was 15 and, again, used my size and strength to discourage bullies and my different nationality made differences seem okay. I guess I was lucky and dodged the bullet many of us have to take head on.
Since then, after I left home to go to University, my life has been a disaster. I could go on and on (and I am tempted to as many of you will understand) but I will cut to the chase.
I have learned how to interact with people so that I appear normal. The thing is that I still have all the social anxiety (I have been in the care of mental health services since I was 19 - always diagnosed as depression), I still overthink and have trouble sleeping or keeping regular hours and I am almost always late for appointments or work. So much so that I have lost every job I ever had and have, despite being married twice, have always been the unwilling recipient of the news "it's over". There is no doubt that I am autistic - the team who diagnosed me abandoned their usual procedures and gave me the diagnosis on my first visit - "it's staring out of you" they said. They also said, after I asked about how "mild" I was, that it is harder for people who are aware of their problems than those who can't make the mental leap to understand that the problem might be with them.
My experience, after years and years of depression and psychological scarring, is that people now question the way I am now, after my diagnosis - often blaming the diagnosis itself and implying that I am "feeling sorry for myself" - "you weren't like this before the diagnosis" etc. The truth is I don't have the energy any more to keep up the facade of the big tough guy any more. I am a sensitive person who loves literature and poetry. I may be big and strong but those things mean nothing to me - I am a big softy who hates confrontation of any kind. It feels like I have "come out" as Aspie and people aren't letting me do it. I say things like "I hate dust", meaning it causes me visceral and emotional havoc and other people say "I hate it too" , meaning they just don't like it as if it's something trivial. I don't like changing the bed but it doesn't cause me any pain and they think it's the same thing. It's like the more I try to live the way I actually am and say things that cause me pain the more people resent me - as if all this happened since my diagnosis. What hurts the most is that people get it backwards - I have spent my whole life covering up and making excuses for things that people believed and now I can't bear it any more they don't see my previous suffering and think I am "at it" now.
The worst of all is that I find it hard to switch off and be myself so I feel like I have to hide and HATE the real me which destroys my self-esteem.
The icing on the cake is that I have a very rich brother who gives me a car and a nice place to live - he at least trusts me enough to know that I am not pretending and has witnessed my decline over the years. That must sound great, right? I guess it helps but I would still rather be dead. While I was able to cope I made very good money on my own and was always able to BS my way around timekeeping/bad paperwork and other executive function issues and, despite suffering several panic attacks most days (and covering then up) I had a measure of self-esteem. Now I don't work and feel useless - a burden on my loved ones. I even have a girlfriend who loves me but, I suspect, is on the spectrum herself and is okay with only seeing me once or twice a week.
I was at a funeral last week and there was another Aspie there. I didn't see him until he was leaving the wake but had heard that there was a "real weirdo" there. When I saw him he looked like the stereotypical aspie - skinny, glasses, incredibly awkward - I didn't get a chance to speak to him - yet I managed to deal with the whole day (dying inside) and had no recognition for it - at least he didn't have to suffer peoples' expectations.
Does anyone else recognise this? It sucks being able (and somehow internally compelled) to appear normal yet not to be and to have your faux pas dismissed as nastiness. Please tell me I am not alone - I am not sure how much more I can take.

Please don't read and ignore this post - I am feeling very bad and need support or I doubt I will be able to cope much longer.

You are, definitely, not alone!

This describes quite a few people here, in general terms.

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I feel really bad but don't know where to go for help. Would be great to hear from others who feel the same way,

Many older people with "high-functioning" autism feel the brunt of expectations--because they don't appear "disordered" on the surface.

This applies to myself as well.

How do you reconcile it with yourself? I am filled with doubt and self-loathing because it, given my diagnosis, appears that it's me who, pragmatically speaking, is in the wrong? Where is the Grail?

The way I did it:

I tried to do the best I could with what I had. I'm not a big executive--but I'm doing okay. I've had a automaton civil service job for almost 35 years, and will get a pension. I graduated college at age 45. I got my drivers license at age 37.

If somebody thought I was weird, I would reverse it, stating "You're weird for thinking that I'm weird; don't you have better things to do with your life than think about how weird I am?"

I've also adopted a "court jester" persona. People think I'm "amiable-weird," rather than "creepy-weird." I don't join in the frequently frivolous discussions around the "water cooler"--and I don't let people know how frivolous their conversation is.

You have to be smart in this world.

I do not have a diagnosis but knowledge of the spectrum has explained quite a bit. Yes, I relate. Luckily though my husband is glad for the explanation and prefers the way I am now rather than before.

My sister said I can't diagnose myself with things (which I haven't and she is also woefully ignorant of the spectrum) and she herself has said she has ADD without any input from any sort of professional that I know of. She blew it off. We don't have a good relationship anyway and her opinion of me is pretty low.

My mom just thought I was shy. Too happy, too silly, etc to be anything autistic. I don't have as much of the social introversion part of it. I was extroverted until I started to become aware of my differences to others and then became very withdrawn. She has stronger ASD traits than I do but doesn't see it. My husband sees it in her too.

My father has ASD or something like it. When I talk to him, we mostly talk about his dealings with it. He asked me once if I was (I deflected the question; didn't know what to say) and he tells people I am. Not sure how I feel about that. These are mostly acquaintances over a thousand miles away so it doesn't really affect me.
I am glad I do not live with my parents. I put up a really good act there because my mom was so upset by my father's features and I internalized a lot of negative things about myself knowing I was like him. Thought it was mental illness and so I made every effort and was obsessed with making myself as unlike him as possible thinking I could cure myself of this "mental illness" so it wouldn't get worse.

I can get by pretty well on the surface socially. It was the social failings that I obsessed over the most in getting rid of and I kept my obsessions to myself, ashamed of them and the things I liked.

I don't know what other people who knew me when I was a late adolescent and teenager thought. I know from things they said and from looks they gave me (yes, I can tell some facial expression) that there was something wrong or off about me but I also appeared like I was doing okay enough.

I know I wasn't much cared for in college. My prolonged low self-esteem was manifesting in arrogance combined with poor social skills and rigid thinking.

One, I believe, also has to believe that he/she is not "disordered"--rather, they are "different."

You have to believe you're a viable person with something to contribute--especially since that is the truth.

You also have to believe that, at times, the "autistic" viewpoint has led to many great inventions, and many innovative philosophical approaches to things. While you have that belief, you also have to be humble (but not subservient), and to know that there are many "intelligences" within humanity, and within all living creatures.

You also have to adapt to the "wider world," rather than overtly rebel against it. You learn lots when you synthesize the attributes of others with your own attributes, rather than resting on your laurels thinking your attributes are the only attributes.

Stereo-typical Aspie ? I don't think Aspies actually fit into any stereo-typical category (but on the other hand I don't watch movies or television so maybe my frame-of-reference is due to not coming from pop-culture).

I know quoting your post is a bit out-of-order here but there is a difference between so-called wrong & different and Aspies are simply different but does not make it « wrong » to be that way.

Believe it or not you'll learn a lot more & get better education by watching documentaries & questioning the status-quo mainstream/conventional-teachings than you could ever get from any modern-day university (with only an extremely small handful few of exceptions but otherwise educational-institutions really are more like false-indoctrination-institutions than truth-teachers and they try to credit/discredit presidential-policies for being the driving/declining force behind economic-activity).

I have been through quite a few jobs myself, most of them due to being temp-assignments, but there are also certainly certain other ones that I was let go from in a professional-manner rather than just being out-right yelled at that I was fired from the job. The high social-interaction jobs, such as being a door-to-door or house-to-house sales-person, a Personal-Trainer at a gym, etc., ones where you have to try and « convince anybody at random to buy from you » well those are poorly & disasterously designed jobs to begin with that are just terrible careers to begin with due to their inefficiency.

Let me put it another way, I knew of this one entrepreneur back in the day, who tried to get one of his friends to advertise his book on his friend's web-site, that was getting 1 million hits/views per month... only to find that after a month only one book was ever sold via that web-site. Then, when he tried advertising on a different friend's web-site, one that was only getting 100 visitors per day, the sales suddenly took off, 37% conversion-rate. The reason ? Because it was targeted towards people who were already interested in that type of product, and needed that kind of information, where-as most of these sales-jobs are crappy « chase all of friends & family down to try & get them to buy from you » NT-style crap that's really just a bunch of time-wasting for people like us who value truth over belief.

I do share a number of similar experiences to you, have had my own share of other people taking care of me & watching out for my own back against nasty NT-style rumours, amongst a number of other things. From what you have written, I don't know if you were ever prescribed anything, but it wouldn't be surprising given the time-frame which years you reveal about certain things happening. You must be careful with those things for reasons I will let this lady explain...

I apologise for not responding to various other parts of your post point-by-point but I will come back to them later if necessary. One area is where you mention about making yourself appear so-called normal, but I do not like to use the word normal, for I do not find the NTs to be normal at all, rather, you have been able to make yourself appear like a bunch of other white sheep, but we black sheep do have our purpose, and serving those purposes first requires that we over-come all of the deceptive-indoctrinations that permeate society.

P.S.: Much of my own personal-research and field-testing has revealed to me that simply eating certain foods whilst completely boycotting & avoiding other certain foods has a much-better effect for health & emotions than much of what is believed/taught/promoted via mainstream/conventional-sources. Here is my list barring certain diabetics...

Eat: Watermelons, oranges (unless diabetic), grapes, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, alfalfa-sprouts (best to grow/sprout your own), bananas, spinach, most other fruits & vegetables, non-processed meats, mushrooms, and make sure to get these from organic-farms, absolutely avoid GMOs, and only get almond-milk instead of the dairy milk that are sold in the grocery stores. Use a pressure-cooker or slow-cooker to make your own healthy meals (and boycott going out to eat at any of the fast-food-restaurants as you do not know where their ingredients originate).

Boycott: Breads (with the exception of purely organic-bread that does NOT use Processed White-Flour as an ingredient), starches, sugars (with the exception of UNprocessed Cane-Sugar), drugs, alcohol, chocolates, candies, actually, better yet, I am going to have you listen to a documentary/seminar for yourself to give you a better idea that you can research for yourself as to what is healthy for you or not. Pay attention to this...

I think what I am writing you understand. So this will probably be confirmation or validation for you. "Passing", "Faking" "pretending to be normal" etc is exausting. As an adult who grew up before much was known about autism it was something we did because we did not know better. What we did was bury our true autistic selves for decades. Diagnosis is a big step but we have so buried our real selves we do not really know who this real autistic person is. Faking, trying to please people became an automatic reflex for us and it is hard to stop.

But deep down you do know if you keep on faking, burying yourself you are headed for burnout or a breakdown. So you need a time out maybe a long one to figure out yourself and be yourself. If you have an passion you have not acted on it awhile bring it back. A lot of issues we consider anxiety or stress are really sensory over stimulation issues that we think everybody else also has or we have not correctly identified. So you may need may need to find out what these are and limit them. If you had a weird repetitive body movement or STIM as a kid but stopped doing it out of embarrassment bring it back. It is just the normal way for autistic's to self regulate or release tension. I am not saying never fake it to make it but it is damm important to actually know when you are faking it and not to overdo it.

I think you are now beginning to understand what you are experiencing is not uncommon among us very late diagnosed. I wish you good luck and we are always here.

As usual your post is relatable and brings me some confidence.

I am 33, I'll be 34 in August. I have spent my entire life pretending to be normal.

I have thought more and more about seeking diagnosis for the simple reason of being able to get people to leave me alone or at least understand a little of what I go through everyday but I know that even with a diagnosis people will still treat me the same.

My mother will actually argue with me about my childhood experiences and how I felt during them. She is adamant that I was a social, happy child but I remind her that she has no idea how it felt to be inside my body, simply because I appeared to be fine with certain events at the time does not mean I actually enjoyed them, I merely didn't have a choice. She wanted to be social and therefore, I was forced to be.

Recently I tried to say that I felt I was on the spectrum and surprisingly my sister and mother agreed that I probably am. After a family gathering where I had not taken all my children with me (I had left some at home with their father) they told me it was a rare chance to see me as I really am and admitted that they had all been shocked by how awkward and uncomfortable I was. They said they realised I used my children to distract from how different I am since people are generally fusing over the little ones and I can busy myself caring for them so don't have to sit still and make polite chit chat.

I thought it would change how they interacted with me. It didn't. They still expect the same things from me.

People will often be in denial about what you really are.

The moment my son was diagnosed ASD everyone went out of their way to highlight how 'normal' he seemed, how sociable, how lovely and bright, as though being on the spectrum meant he shouldn't be any of those things. My aunt (who works with special needs adults including ASD) even went as far as to say had she not known his diagnosis she would never have thought he was because he isn't like any of her 'specials' that she cares for because he is so eloquent. I was insulted and angry about this. It felt like she was questioning his diagnosis altogether especially as she had even gone as far as saying 'I'm not questioning his diagnosis'. Well, to me, she was.

I feel that for a lot of NT people, unless you are non-verbal, rocking in the corner making noises or walking around behaving like RainMan, they don't believe you are autistic at all.

I keep to myself so people do not witness my non-NT behaviours. They don't see my meltdowns; they don't see me stimming (it's subtle and most probably wouldn't notice), they don't hear me talking to myself (I learnt as a child to talk quietly because people think crazy people talk to themselves). I could go on but I fear I've rambled too long as it is.

You are not alone.

Thanks for your posts - it helps a little not to feel so alone with this.

Thank you for your kind words.

Ask me - I'm autistic. Ask anyone else - I'm perfectly normal, just nasty/mean. Yes, it's a curse for me, but everything has an up side and a down side. At least, passing for normal gets me accepted for jobs and therefore out of a horrible institution where they throw the "crazies" that have no family to support them.

I've read it takes 50% of the time elapsed in your relationship for close ones to accept a new you. So you're looking at 20+ years (you were 43) in the case of family. It's better to find something else to do while you wait, rather than waste your energies trying to shorten the natural process your close ones psychologically need to undergo. I'm not sure that explaining and explaining helps, as denial and resistance can be stronger than any other force in human psychology and pushing might be counterproductive.

Besides, belonging in society is a constant compromise between the true self and the group, too. Many aspies, after decades of suppressing their personalities completely, upon learning they're autistic, swing the pendulum to the other extreme, wanting everyone to know, understand, respect and be considerate of every sign of every AS trait. NTs don't get that much consideration for their own limitations either. It's all a compromise.