What would your life be like if you were never autistic?

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And you must be a Wolfman at times!

Good for you! It may be the "normals'" world- but we can adapt and navigate in it surprisingly well.

I've been gainfully employed since I was 16, and am married with an adult son (and a granddaughter.)

I'm not going to tell you that being on the spectrum makes life easier- it doesn't- but I will add that I don't know what it is to be one of the "normals," because I've never been one. I also didn't know what was "wrong" with me until I was 35 years old. I just knew what I had to work with- and what I had to work around.

Don't let anything hold you back if you choose to do something even if some aspects of your endeavor prove to be uncomfortable or difficult. You can prevail- if you choose to- and you work at it!

Yes you're right. I'm 5 ft 3 and 105 pounds and have always wanted to be a center in the NBA. I will never give up my dream of being a center in the NBA. I will practice against 3rd graders if I have to. You have inspired me!

And if my center dream doesn't work out, then i'm going to be an offensive lineman in the NFL. I wan't to block against J.J. Watt.

I believe that it would be better, due to the fact that I also suffer from severe depression and anxiety. The autism has cut me off from most sources of support. People reach out in the beginning, but I'm unable to return the favor in a way that makes the other person feel appreciated. The best I can do is vent and hope for some initial support - but then I sense that I wear out my welcome <- this happened in a therapeutic setting. No one was immune to paranoia. Even therapists, I sense, are paranoid. They cringe at anything 'different'.

The plain truth is, you can't know or even realistically imagine what your life would be like without autism, because if you didn't have autism, you'd be a different person entirely.

From the moment you were born, your sensory issues have molded who you are. As you grew from infant, to toddler, to adolescent to teenager to adult, the very eyes through which you see the world around you have been continually influenced by the wiring in your brains that caused you to absorb every second of sensory experience differently than your NT peers do. You don't react to sound, or touch, or light or temperature the same way they do, because it doesn't affect you like it affects them. You may both be looking at the same world, but you're not seeing it the same way. As a result, your thought processes, your approach to problem solving, your expectations, your apprehensions, are not the same as theirs.

Therefore, if you had gone through all that without autism, you would be a different person. Your reactions to every sensation you have ever experienced would have been different, creating over time, a personality different from the one you now have. You might have the same name and the same face, but the person inside that skull would not be the person you are now. And its impossible to guess what that person's life would have been like, or whether it would be significantly better than what you have now. All you can know is that it would be different.

^ This

In some ways better, in some ways worse.

If I were an nt:
Id be married
id have kids, maybe
id have graduated college
id have friends
Maybe id have more money

But I wouldnt have my quirky interests. I couldnt imagine not having my interests. Id be scared of doing things by myself, too.

I would not have struggled nearly as much to get through college at all, I would probably be 54895 times further along in my professional career, I would probably not have had as many times where I felt the best thing for me to do to contribute to society was to tie a noose and hang myself or step in front of a speeding train and I would not be struggling so much to function independently and I I would feel 589885 times less need to compensate for severe shortcomings.

Normal people do normal things. We need people who aren't normal, the people who think out of the box and challenge what is right and acceptable and someone who isn't afraid. These are the people who have the potential to change the world.

We as a human race are easily influenced by others and their norms, even more so then you may think. Chances are you walk like your parents, have the same accent as your parents, and your fashion and even your favorite sport is easily influenced by societal norms. Why do you think the NFL is so popular in the USA but not anywhere else? Nothing wrong with wanting to fit in. But someone in a position of power can use our sheep-like tendencies to their advantage and what was previously considered inhumane is now acceptable in that society. All it takes is some form of struggle and people will be blind to follow anyone who promises them change.

Hitler was a powerful and spellbinding speaker who attracted a wide following of Germans desperate for change. He promised the disenchanted a better life and a new and glorious Germany. The Nazis appealed especially to the unemployed, young people, and members of the lower middle class (small store owners, office employees, craftsmen, and farmers).

I'm bad at socializing with with people and I just can't picture how it's possible to just start a conversation etc without being nervous.

I have afew physical disabilities in addition to Dyslexia & ADD that limit me more than my Aspergers so I think my life would be about the same without AS.

Good point. Everyone does have limitations- that's simple reality, and in your illustration of the basketball center, some of those limitations boil down to simple physics. There are some things that are restricted by nature itself.

I was trying to stress the importance of not letting others define one's limitations- for instance for me to take it to heart if someone tells me I can't do something (i.e. drive or be gainfully employed) simply because I have an ASD. I apologize for not making that aspect of what I was trying to say more clear.

I don't think in sports analogies, which is why I didn't go into the realm of dreams of physical prowess. Aspiring to big time sports careers just isn't on my radar. I'm female and have dreadfully poor gross motor skills. I've never had any desire to participate in any form of sport for anything more than personal exercise and fitness. I completely suck at any sort of organized sport. I go swimming in the mornings before work- 1/2 hour of laps and 1/2 hour of strength training- for health's sake- and that is something I can do. I don't compare my physical abilities to anyone else. I can only say, "Have I improved over where I was yesterday?"

I know when I was younger I was much more pessimistic about what I could achieve, largely because I didn't have the experience and the frame of reference to understand that not every setback or failure is a tragedy. Even though I will never be a professional linebacker or a fashion model, (even if I wanted to, which I don't) there are a wealth of things I can do, and that I can do well. I still have a healthy sense of cynicism, but even with that, all I can do is the best I can with what I've been given.

Different? Certainly.
Better? Likely.
More boring? Probably.

And to me "boring" would simply mean a slow death. I must be wired the way I am for a reason, or at least as proof that God has a sense of humor.

True indeed. It is about how we are socially perceived /treated by others ( NTs) but I would also add that our bodily experiences, i.e. how we feel physically...the meltdowns, the depressions, sensitivity, sensory issues, the inability to do work when work needs to be done. When we cannot get up from bed and rush to the kitchen...stuff like that...give us pain. Our body/brain experience are always not relative to social treatment but have an intrinsic/independent basis. Are we feeling the bodily pain only because it is a world dominated by the NTs ? Partly yes, partly no. Partly yes because NTs like loud music, loud sound, fast life etc. in which we feel uncomfortable. But if we live in a forest where there are no NTs but only wild animals -would we be able to tolerate their loud noise at night ? Nor can we expect the animals to show us some empathy. And what about the wild animals in the forest ? They are uncomfortable around both Aspie and NT intrusion....just a thought.

I think my life would be different.
First I would probably be an engineer, lawyer, doctor or work in business. But instead I work in films.
I probably wouldn't artistic.
I would have more friends, and probably much more dates (I still get dates btw).
I would go out more often.
I would probably doing better for myself money wise.
I would probably be married with kids or something.
And I think my apartment could be classier and not a "geek cave" with hundreds and hundreds of DVD's and BR's all over, comics, action figures and 4 running computers on my office, but more in the style of what someone would expect from someone 34.