Why do so many of you want to be different?

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As I've said before, I've had a very strong sense of being different from everyone else since I was a very small child. Even now, one of the foremost thoughts on my mind is "I don't belong here. I want to go home, but I don't know where that is."

I'm so tired of people not loving or accepting me as I am, and what's worse is I struggle every day with accepting myself. At several moments a day, I often feel like death would be a better option, but then I start to think of how it would affect my Mom, and how God saving me from suicide 12 years ago must've had some kind of purpose.

Sorry you feel that way regarding life at times.

I sometimes wonder if life is worth living, not because I can't accept myself but because I get such a hard time from society.

I don't believe in the belief system it teaches, not the one I seem to encounter the majority of the time where I am living anyway. What joy can be found in a society so ignorant amongst a species that likes to hurt each other so much. Why joy is there in a world that cannot accept difference. What joy in a world where there is constant pressure to conform to some strange set of criteria that society uses to measure what a human being should be.

If you don't meet that criteria, you are disordered, ill, crazy, defective....

It's no different to that of a witch hunt,except instead of burning people at the stake or hanging them by the neck for their 'difference' we stigmatise them with being 'disordered'. Take away their right to be an individual by medicating them and bullying them into being something they are not naturally meant to be.

I can understand wanting to control behaviour that is dangerous...that is not the kind thing I am talking about but someone not wanting to make chit chat for example? How does someone wanting to sit quietly and read instead of gossip hurt anyone? Yet often such a person is ostracised or talked about and ridiculed whilst the gossips are admired and socially accepted.

The quite person will be labelled as 'wierd', 'unfriendly', 'depressed' and so on along with the negative connotations that go along with that.

Society has become ridiculous and I have no love for it. It thinks I should hate myself because it won't accept me, I think it should go f**k itself because society is an ignorant arse that is far too judgmental. There is the occasional interesting individual but this I find is becoming increasingly rare, especially around so called 'normals'. Normal seems to mean gossipy, ignorant, illogical, irrational, aggressive (verbally or physically), cliquey, arrogant and with a superiority complex.

I have digressed. I just wonder what I am staying a live for...

Being around other humans is pure misery
There is no career to get up to
Being in the mental health system means they keep trying to simplify everything...They believe I will get stressed etc if I take on things they consider difficult. They offer support for things I don't need support with (such as help with my studies if i want to do a course...um I don't even need to revise for exam to get an A, I think I can manage to study all by myself without someone holding my hand, but thanks). What they consider complicated or difficult I find too easy. At the moment I am so bored I am losing my marbles. My brain does not know what to do with itself, hence my desire to learn piano. Something to learn...something new to do, a new challenge to take on.

I like that kind of challenge.

I hate being stuck in the mental health system because I am not good at social chit chat and would rather be off learning things and reading books instead. It sucks here...there is no joy. Everyone hates themselves, they don't feel passion for anything, they spend their whole lives judging themselves instead of wanting to experience and learn. They don't see the beauty in the world...

I go out riding buses instead of going to support groups when I feel down or suicidal because there is much beauty to be seen and I need to see that beauty in order to have a reason to stay here. A reason to stick around and live.

Being in a support group with people who hate everything in the world, who can't see the magnificence out there, whom are obsessed with their ego and power and status to the extent that it is making them ill and stopping them from truly experiencing the wonders of life just makes me want to come home and slash my wrists.

I don't mean that offensively, it is just how I feel and how I feel when around other depressed people.

I need a reason to stay on earth, not a reason to leave it. I get nothing from group hugs and people I hardly know going 'awww'.

I get more from sitting by the ocean on a deserted patch of coastline feeding the seagulls and thinking to myself how much I would like to immortalise what I am seeing on canvas for all eternity, if only I could paint that is.

Yet the world expects me to hid away in bed with my depression as though I should ashamed of myself because I feel sad and lonely for the company of those who see the beauty out there too.

Meh, I don't like society.

It's also why I am getting rid of my TV. I dislike the ideals and values society and media spread around. I have moral objections to much of it.

Hi my friend.

Only think about yourself and what can make you get a good life, screw everone who do not accept you. It is not easy to give a f**k about them when they are everywhere, but we should!

It might be possible to change the title to "If you want to be more neurotypical....why?"

Ehm, maybe because I don't want to please others but just be comfortable with myself? Maybe because I am disabled?
I am not like you. Up to a few years ago I wasn't even able to remember when I had to brush my teeth, I had horrible hygene and washed my hait/bathed something like once or twice a month. I am glad I was able to improve so that now I wash my hair at least once a week and remember to brush my teeth every day.
I am no excellent student, I am just an average student who has severe difficulties understanding some subjects, even though I am naturally good at others. And I have an high IQ, and am supposed to be a straight-A student because of that. But I am not because my problems outnumber my abilities.
I hate looking younger than my actual age (what the hell has that to do with autism anyway?).
I hate being a paranoid idiot that has problems going out on her own due to the fact that I get lost very easily and that I fear being assaulted. I hate the fact that every time I go out of my house alone I have to carry a weapon with me because if I don't I can't leave the house.
I hate my sensory issues and the meltdowns they cause me.
I hate having panic attacks.
I hate the fact that my elementary school teachers made me develop a sort of ODD due to their s***ty metods and that now I have to present myself as threathening and emotionless to people because I fear that if they know I have some feelings other than anger they are going to bully me again.

Why shouldn't I desire some of those things to change? Why shouldn't I desire to have panic attacks or sensory issues no more? Just to be "myself"? I can be myself without those problems. Asperger's is not my personality. ADD is not my personality. Whenever people say that they are part of my personality they greatly offended me because they're saying I am not a person but just a disorder, a mistake, and I'd want to kick their b***.


If I improved since I was a child it's not to please others. It's so that I can feel better. I do not feel good as a disabled person. But I can't change that, and since I'm born disabled, I'll f***ing be disabled all my whole life. This does not mean my life is going to be horrible but why shouldn't I make it easier by taking a med that can help me with anxiety and ADD?

If I didn't require medicine to keep my epilepsy at bay, I'd definitely tell the professional medical community to kiss my ass. I'm on Medicaid, so I don't have to pay for it out of pocket...but sometimes it still requires jumping through a few hoops.

My mother's main problem with me is I won't get a job, and I've tried explaining to her that my main reason is because I don't want to live apart from her. By contrast, my sister's 30 going on 50, having been fiercely independent for as long as I can remember. When i tried telling her about AS, she bluntly accused me of looking for more reasons to avoid working or growing up.

I'm not a total leech, though; about a third of my monthly SSI goes to Mom every month, plus I pay my own Internet and phone bills.

A good friend who is a psychologist put it this way. For a person to be happy he must

1. Be ego-syntonic: aware of who he is and be happy with who he is.
2. Be able to function in the world.

That's it. All the blahblahblah of these very long posts need to be reduced to these two criteria.

For a second I thought this was about why do you want to be less normal, because that is the question that has been posed to me over my entire life and it's eaten away at me before in the past.
Why do you want to be different, do you think you are special, you're not unique! Then like someone else mentioned the same people end up yelling at me for my lack of ability to assimilate or just abandoning me, giving up on me.

I don't want to be different from how I am now, I don't want to be special either I just want to be myself and have that be normal enough.

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me......I think it's because if you compare how I've turned out versus where my siblings are in life, there's so much in "normal" life experiences which I've missed out on/been shut out of. (for example, I'm the only one who can't drive, still lives at home, and isn't married) And because there aren't too many ways in which I have advantages over them, this bothers me a bit.

That sums me up. It's not so much that I want to be more different or more normal, I just want to be able to function and have some space to enjoy myself. Being myself isn't worth being alone and dependent on others for food and shelter, and fitting in isn't worth giving up who I am.

I just like being me- whether some things I do/ some aspects of the way I am are considered 'different' or 'normal', I don't care.

Oh i can function in the natural world just fine, its human society that causes the problem.

Society offers people a miserable existence. For example the love of my life is learning but I don't fair well in mainstream education because people are intimidated by my level of ability so I have to suppress it. This is one reason I can't work in groups. My level of ability upsets them and I am not allowed to perform freely.

All I hear from people if I say anything is that I have to be considerate of their feelings. Um I think they mean their insecurities. Does it really benefit mankind for people to have to suppress their ability because people are taught to have insecure egos and to believe they are inferior rather than just having a different skill set? Society is an idiot. It would be better to teach society to respect different skills and levels of ability and to focus on what each individual has to offer without bringing all this superior/inferior/worthy/worthless s**t into it.

Let each person do what they can and be individually and equally appreciated for whatever their contribution may have been.

I was always happy to share my ability with anyone who needed help, I never did want to keep it to myself. I wanted to help mankind at one point because I didn't like to see it suffering and as a young naive child I thought I might be able to make a difference. Anyone who needed help with their work etc only had to ask.

The human race has become so obsessed with its own delicate ego that it wants those who have skills that could benefit society and humankind to suppress what they can do because insecure souls can't cope because they were taught a sh***y belief system.

And what about my rights? Don't I have the right to use my full potential and to be allowed to learn my own speed instead of holding myself back to wait for others to catch up?

The world is also too judgmental. Who in the hell really has the right to judge another human beings worth? And why? So they can feel superior to others? Oh for the love of god! Man is arrogant. Yet another ego trip by mankind.

Society tells people they have to be x, y and z or own this that and the other in order to be considered worthy. What absolute rubbish. This is where a lot of problems come from. If society were to respect difference, if it was more egalitarian do you really believe that people on the spectrum would have so many problems functioning?

Also, yes I realise people need stability and warmth and food but materialism is also rife. I reject it, I don't want huge TV's and over priced gadgets that I will hardly ever use. I don't care if the world thinks I am a loser because I don't own much. Other than my digital piano because I really want to learn to play and perhaps teach so I can pass on the ability to play beautiful music I don't care for material possessions. They don't bring me happiness...they causes misery in the long run. I'd rather spend my money on art supplies, music books, education and traveling anyway. So people feel bad about themselves because they are told they are nothing unless they have these material things.

Crap!! !

Lets add an even more crazy way of looking at things into the post. The social abilities of NTs are desired. Ok I understand loneliness but let us look at some of the not so positive results of NT social behaviour.

1 High crime rates
2 Over population...yeah ok they get to pass on their genes more but they are over populating the planet, putting a strain on it and need to stop! More social skills = higher chance of having offspring. Stop it the planet is struggling as it is.
3 They are more likely to get STDs
4 Their overly social behaviour can also spread other illnesses if they are infectious.
5 They are sending other species extinct see point 2
6 By being arrogant and assuming that anyone without social skills is abnormal and inferior to them they are possibly creating disabilities and psychiatric illnesses that do not exist (because they are differences not disorders) and putting a strain on society and medical services as a result.

Perhaps they should opt for a more versatile world instead of setting everything up to work for one social group because the ones who keep breeding due to their overly social natures causing a strain on the earth in the process.

And so on.

More blahblah..

I like blahblah, it amuses me. I like thinking.

Whoa there! I totally understand where you're coming from, because I was always the smartest guy in the room (well, not always, but usually) and I always got upset that my intelligence would -- and I quote from a friend of mine who tried to explain why I was getting nowhere -- "you intimidate people" so that they didn't want to work with me and they shunned me. I was like, "What? I'm not intimidating anyone. I'm just being me." To which my friend replied, "Exactly."

I have to eat and live and get a paycheck. So I've learned to play by NT rules. It's survival. I am happy with being an Aspie, but this is not my planet. So I have to live by its rules.