How does having Aspergers give you a hard time?

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Identify the single & most depressing effect of Aspergers on your life.

OK, where shall I start....? OK, once I start, I can't stop, so I'd better try to keep this as short as I can, otherwise I would be writing an essay what nobody would bother to read.

My life is OK, I just don't like being me as an individual. I'd rather be born NT. I know people say ''ohh but you wouldn't be you'', but so what if I wouldn't be me? That's what I want is to not be me. And if I was NT I wouldn't know any better anyway. I wouldn't be sitting there thinking, ''ohh I wish I was the Aspie who I could have been!'' The reason why I sit there thinking, ''ohh I wish I was the NT who I could have been!'' is because there are NTs all around me and I've grasped too much of the social world and I've been subconsciously observing NT behaviour since the day I was diagnosed, so that is why I can try to picture myself as one of them, and it's making me think how flukey it was for me to be lumbered with such a misunderstood, difficult condition and nobody else around me has to suffer with it, only me. It's because I'm born to be outcasted. I was born to be ''problem child''.

Right I think that just about wraps up how me having AS makes me so miserable. Also the crap social skills. I may be able to read all non-verbal cues and everything like that, but it's having confidence verbalising thoughts what is the problem, and it doesn't seem to be improving, so it must just be part of my social difficulties I have. I just wish I could subconsciously give off social vibes and know the right thing to say and be able to make friends easier and be able to be happier in a social situation instead of sitting there stiffly and feeling extremely shy and overwhelmed. It makes life so difficult, because I'm too high-functioning to be excused from normal society, but I'm too anxious and socially inept to actually be able to go more smoothly through normal society. Everything I need to do has to involve social interaction, but with me giving off these awkward vibes all the times makes life extra hard.

So, to cut it short, constantly giving off vibes without trying to is why AS makes life so hard.

The ignorance of others.

The hardest thing for me is that I continually offend people when that is the last thing I want to do.

This is an easy question to answer. I can't keep a job or steady friendship going for more than a year and a half.

At work, I eventually become hyper aware of how awful people are to each other: the web of lies that is spun under the guise of politeness. Eventually, it is overwhelming and I can't focus on the work anymore.

With friends, I share too much of myself, and eventually offend the other with some view or belief that is too far out of sync with their acceptable norm.

The way that typical people treat me like dirt.

I'm afraid of unfamiliarity. It hinders me in various ways, such as not wanting to be around people I don't know, driving to places I've never been, trying new things, etc.

Hmm, I have NVLD, and AS is like 50/50 chance. NVLD tends to manifest pretty similar to AS in it's issues, but NLD is only measured neurologically and scientifically, whereas a psychiatrist measures for AS by observed behavior. So there's that whole thing.

So for the biggest problem... I'm a conundrum to people and they have no idea how to classify me or like, "do anything" with me. I'm also unsure of how to classify myself, too. Like, I'm able to, say...work on a car and like, replace a motor, and I actually really enjoy driving recreationally if I'm alone. However, I also tend to emotionally do terrible if there's passengers in the car or lots of traffic. My sense of direction is also terrible, but because I like driving recreationally, and I'm not really a "bad" driver, people expect me to also handle traffic and people in the car, too, by extension. I'm odd in that I have random spurts of introversion and extroversion, and like, I'm able to talk with random people like it's nothing at all, so I seem like I'm socially competent. Then people get to know me better, say I'm annoying or weird and stop wanting to hang out with me. So, because I can display extreme competence in some areas, people expect more of me than I can really realistically deliver. Basically, I'm half a genius, but on the same point, half almost ret*d, and it's hard to work within the parameters of those two extremes.

Oh, and I have a tendancy to type really long posts nobody will read on messageboards.

The fact that because of Asperger's, I have no hope for a stable/successful career. No hope for ever having a family of my own. The idea of being dirt poor / homeless at some point because of the above reasons.

What makes life hard for me is if we are always told that staring is inappropriate, but I get people staring at me all the time, and they don't even know me. I guess it's OK for NTs to do inappropriate things, but if we do, we get accused of being rude and inappropriate. And there is no ''wrong times'' and ''right times'' - people stare at me where ever I am whatever I'm doing, and I never, ever stare at people.

One word: Misunderstandings. Apparently, my communication skills aren't as effective as they need to be, because I frequently become involved in misunderstandings both on the Internet and in real life. I'll say/post something and someone else will take it completely out of context and become angry/upset, or I will do the same to someone else. When I am the cause of the misunderstanding, it makes me frustrated and I wonder if I should feel guilty about making the other person upset even though I didn't mean to. When I am the person who misunderstood someone else, I feel stupid when I learn what they really meant, because I know I should have interpreted it that way from the beginning.

The hard part of me is when I'm at work and the few people I like to talk to because I like them either don't talk to me or don't say hello.

Then there is the fact that some people think I come off as being rude when I don't mean to be at all.

The really bad part is out side of one person that being on of my bosses no one knows that I have aspergers or ADD. I wish I could just come out and tell those people it may make things easy for me and not have to in a figure of speech wear a mask.

The outside world and me have different "time-lines".
Everybody I know does progress. Having jobs, earning money, getting promotion, having children, having a circle of friends, talking about things I have no experience with and probably never will have. Sometimes I wish that the world had a "pause-button", because it goes way too fast for me and I have the feeling I need more time to be able to "catch up".
I am constantly analyzing what is happening around me and I finally never come to terms.
I never know how people will react on me. When I am in a social situation, I have to go to my inner "library" of situations that I had before and have to search for a match to be able to join it. Otherwise I am lost and I mute. And even if I find a "match", later I am insecure, if I did or said the "right thing".
I am always in tension.

Right now - it's responsible in part for unemployment, which has a massive effect on every aspect of my health, life, and future.

Generally - how easy it is to lose friends, knowing I am a friendly person and that people like me, but it's impossible to maintain friendships. It's strange seeing how easily it seems to come to other people, when other people have maintained friendships with people they were friends with in school...the whole concept of friendship baffles me at times, but I'm not quite sure why it's so hard.