How does aspies live with self haterd?

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I've had very low self esteem all of my life. It was something that was continually reinforced due to my lack of "fitting in", physical and social awkwardness, etc. I would have to admit, at times, I've also crossed over into self hatred and overall viewing myself as a loser.

I find that counting my blessings helps. There are always people that have it harder than I do.

In my forties now and after having done a lot of research over a period of time and realizing that I am textbook AS in aspect after aspect, it's provided me a lot of relief. I'm am the way I am for a reason and so much from my past makes sense now.

I like that question: "if your legs didn't work, would you hate yourself for that?". Much like the fact that I've had tinnitus (constant ear ringing) probably since birth. I've never experienced silence ever (I would LOVE to) and most likely I never will. I can't turn it off, I can't change it. I don't hate myself for that.

Why hate yourself for being social awkward? It is what it is. And you can change it. I'm not saying it'll happen overnight---but I believe people with autism can use their cognition to improve in the social realm.

I would hate myself if I knew I was just remaining the same, without trying.

I dont hate myself, I just tend to hate basically everything and everyone else.

Seems easier that way.

I hadda learn how to the reflection in the mirror, being that it has been a durable thing.

Did you read that William Carlos Williams poem about some guy dancing awkwardly before a mirror. What you said, AuntBlabby, was so applicable to that.

Dance Russe-
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
'I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so! '
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

I think that's what we Aspies should aspire to.

Not giving a living s**t about what anybody else thinks!

It's YOUR dance, nobody else's!

damned straight!

The ironic thing is that William Carlos Williams was a medical doctor, in addition to being a poet.

He wrote the poem in the 1910s.

some people are so smart, they have so many extra brain cells, that it spills over into every other area of life, we call such lucky and gifted souls "renaissance men."

Wallace Stevens was sort of like that, too. He was high up in insurance.

But his poetry was much more obscure.

obscure poetry reminds me of the observation by Adrian Mitchell, "most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people."

That's a very wise and pithy statement----because it's frequently true.

Once people like James Joyce and T.S. Eliot started getting pretentiously "experimental," they lost their appeal to me.

there are very few poems that "speak" to me. some paint an evocative picture, such as this one which was a favorite of the late Ray Bradbury and influenced his work-

DOVER BEACH [By Mathew Arnold]

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;--on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

I have sort of a mixed reaction.

It's a justifiable cynicism---but I still feel I want to see the Lighthouse of Transcendence amid all the "ignorant armies clashing."

the last paragraph grabbed me though, deeply.