How do you manage to live a normal life?

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How do you manage to live independently with a wife, kids and full-time job?

I can't understand how it is possible! I can't even pull myself together to boil an egg!

How do you manage to be so mature and independent? I depend on everyone around me. I can't be social, I can't talk to other people IRL.

drugs and faking it.
haven't got a wife, though. wish i did - she could do some of the housework.

I just keep thinking about the homeless shelter that's waiting for me if I don't. Or the toothless hobo gang at the burn barrel under the bridge and how much I'd enjoy being stuck permanently with their company.

As I see it, what choice do I have? Nobody's going to do it for me.

Drugs, therapy, faking it, and knowing when to call it quits.
High maintenance friendships? Dump them. Quality not quantity
soul sucking Job? Quit do something anything that makes you happier.
relationships? Some work, some don't, Don't put all your eggs in one basket, and remember you deserve to be happy.

The whole wife, 2.5 kids, a dog , a cat, a house, a 9-5 and a 401k seems to be the normal and best thing, but it's not for everybody. Focus on what makes you happy and not the concept of normality. good luck!

Oh yeah Onibunny, you said it. Exactly.

Yea, I caint manage to have a normal life. I try, I fail, I try again.

It's not fun.

At least my fiancee understands AS on a level I'm just barely getting to. Add that to my physical disability, and yea, my chances of EVER being normal are slim.

So maybe some day, I'll wise up and quit trying. I just need to be me. It doesn't matter what else I do.

Well stated...I have a spouse, kids, and full-time job. The kids are nearly grown and I find myself thinking of crap just like this.

Aren't there social nursing homes for people with special needs, operated by the government or private institutions with government funding and early retirement pension for those who can't work full time?

Where in the world do you live? In the third world?

I don't manage to lead a normal life, mainly because I can't support myself and because I don't communicate so I can't have relationships.

I do however manage to survive, barely but expertly.

I do this by reducing reducing reducing everything around and inside me as much as possible (ie diet, social interaction - everything that can't be removed is simplified).

This has gotten me through so far but I don't know for how much longer.

BTW I live in a welfare state but there is no help available to me so don't be rude to people when they answer your question and tell your their problems, most of them probably have even less access to services than I do.

I feel for the autistic people I meet on this board (I guess they don't really meet me because I don't talk enough, most people here are more chatty and irrational than I am) but I would like to take this opportunity to say hi to myself and other profoundly but invisibly autistic people who don't fit any stereotypes and aren't ever addressed by anybody other than themselves.

HI IRISRISES, KEEP YOUR HEAD UP!

I do appreciate me, I really do, it's such good fortune.

I just noticed my last post was my post number 99 so I have to see if something happens to my 'blue jay' status when I get to 100.

YAY! I am now a raven.

What is this 'normal' of which you speak?

Seriously...I'm not sure how I pass for 'normal'. I think I'm just very, very good at faking it.

I have a job that doesn't require me to interact with people too much, and allows me (shh, don't tell!) a lot of writing time.

I met my husband through a pagan dating zine. Ideal, because we'd been writing to one another for a while before we realized we liked each other enough to pluck up courage to actually meet and do the talking thing. (He, also, suspects he may be AS, or perhaps he's just terminally shy.)

I don't have children. I'd been through one marriage without having had any, and was into the second before I realized I was probably too screwed up, scared and selfish to raise them properly. Fortunately, my second husband thinks the same way. Cats are much easier.

I don't like housework, and do the absolute bare minimum. My husband does likewise. We get away with this by rarely having people round, or not the sort of people who notice things like you not doing housework.

I sort of fumble through the whole money thing. Someone up there must be looking after me on that count. I didn't intend to have a mortgage, but things kind of turned out that way.

I get away with not having a degree by being the family artist. Nobody expects me to do anything, therefore my award-winning album/novel/gallery show is going to come as a huge surprise.

And, I surreptitiously avoid a lot of things people take for granted....TV, gossip, fashion (I'm a dedicated thrift-store pack rat)...and have a whole secret side to myself that most people don't know about. Oh yeah - medication (on and off), spirituality and the power of cheap music (and since then are those not the same thing?!) also help.

It took some years of soul-searching to realize that 'normal' didn't work for me. I think I've almost found something that does.

Not sure what's truly normal these days. I just keep plugging away. What else is there? Anything I find value in gets taken from me, so I don't do that anymore. I have a job & I am very grateful for that, becasue it's the 1st time in years I have had some stability & success. I am no less wierd than I was as a child, & I have given up trying to fit in/belong in a place I clearly don't. Some days it's easier to get by (don't really care what others' think & to hell with 'em!), some days, I don't even want to get out of bed (just because I am tired of living in a world where I will never be accepted). I find my interests is what keeps me going though.

I don't have a 'normal' life. I don't have a normal relationship, a 'regular' job, or children. What I did was use connections and a co-signer with good credit to get an apartment lease in a 'ghetto' part of town. I am currently looking at foreclosed houses and apartment buildings so that I can get tenants when my lease is up. I make money through a vast web of freelance gigs, part-time jobs, investments, band performances, graduate school fellowship, debts due to me, art sales and the like. (This makes my tax preparation a hassle.) This in turn is facilitated through my social network, in which I am quite important due to certain skill sets.

I often think about the same stuff Willard does. I don't live in anything like the third world but those scenes are ones I see quite often and NOT in the movies. Perhaps it's too cynical an approach for some people, but please be aware that such outcomes are very real in the US and much of the "developed" world.

That said, I want to heartily second the rest of the advice here. Normal is way overrated. Find out what routines/rituals work to help you deal with the demands of life in general. Don't be ashamed or embarrassed by your well-chosen adaptations to the world-as-it-stands.

Best of luck. Life can be really fine and totally abnormal at the same time.