Would you like to get rid of the ASD?

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I'm me and I am au-some!
'Wouldn't change a thing.

My questions to the others who are following this thread are:

*How important is your asperger-diagnosis for your identity? Is it relevant at all for your identity?

*If the diagnosis is important for your identity - in what way is it that?

My answer to the given questions is that I don't base my identity upon my diagnosis. I can't for example necessarily identify myself more with another autist than with a NT if we don't have other things in common. For me my diagnosis is an explaination model for a major part of the difficulties I have and it can partly explain my way of functioning. Asperger is a disorder or a handicap, but nothing more. I therefore would be glad if I got rid of it.

*How important is your asperger-diagnosis for your identity? Is it relevant at all for your identity?

It is my base (Autism itself, the diagnostic words are irrelevant), so very important though not all there is to it. It is part of my inherent self.

*If the diagnosis is important for your identity - in what way is it that?

If I wasn't autistic every part of my thinking and way of viewing the world would change. Everything natural to me would become unnatural, everything unnatural would become natural. I simply wouldn't at my base be the same, and because of that everything built on it would also fall. Nothing that makes me me would remain, but my body itself, which is the least important to it.

No, I'm fine with the ASD. Instead of treatment, I want a matchmaker to find people who can use my talents.

Yes I would. There is nothing I like about having ASD. I'm aware of what I am missing out on, and although I do have a job I like and a relationship I'm happy in and I no longer live with my parents, I still feel like a 60-year-old trapped in a young person's body. When I hear of other 20-somethings saying how they went out and got drunk at the weekend, and when I hear older people talk about when they used to go out and get drunk at weekends, I kind of feel like an outsider and I feel boring and antisocial. If I were NT I would most probably have more courage and willingness to do that, being so every NT I know has gone out and got drunk at some point in their lives in a nightclub. The only people I've met who have never gone to a nightclub or been drunk in their lives are 4 of my friends and they are not NTs; one has autism, one has Fragile-X, one has a form of mental retardation, and one might have an ASD. Otherwise, literally everyone else that I know has been clubbing and drunk.

I have a cousin who is the biggest socialiser ever, and is even more sociable than the average NT. Although she doesn't earn much money, she is always living the nightlife; clubs, pubs, bars, gigs, parties - every weekend with lots of friends and she even meets more friends at these places and gets their phone numbers and then arranges to meet them again, at another party or something, and she ends up sleeping round their houses. Even some NTs say they couldn't keep up a social life like she does. She is just a extraordinarily super-extroverted NT with so much social skills that her brain is probably as big as Einstein's, except with social skills instead of intellectual skills (although she never did too badly in school academic-wise). I wish I was like her. I'm the complete OPPOSITE; scared of nightclubs, never get invited out with friends, hardly make friends only acquaintances, and rather quiet and solitary. Plus I struggled academically in school too. So I must have a brain the size of a pea.

Life is just unfair sometimes. Some people have it all, others are just useless.

^^ There are myriads of other amusements besides alcohol. I was in one self-help group that decided to go bowling and on various other outings for practice acting normal. There are also groups for people who like almost every kind of hobby where you would have something to talk about. Regular drinkers, OTOH, often need to join AA, and they make such a shambles of their lives that just as many people go to Al-Anon, a group for recovery from trying to be their friends while they drank. I had to bar one regular guest because she was having blackouts, and forgetting her previous visits.

I think it's the way the vast majority of people seem to think drinking is the most wonderful and necessary thing ever, otherwise it wouldn't be so common. In a way I'm glad I never wasted my money going out drinking at clubs when I was younger because that means I have saved my money over the last 10 years and I have quite a lot of savings now. But I still feel like an outsider, and most people in their 20s and even 30s frown upon those that don't drink.

I regret that I didn't find social outlets compatible with my interests when I was growing up. I am doing that now, and am much happier.

I just want to be neurotypical for a million reasons.