Do you have "buyer's remorse" about adult life?

[pbrower2a]

(09-27-2016, 04:41 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(09-27-2016, 07:48 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Undiagnosed Asperger's messed up my personal life about as badly as alcoholism or drug addiction except for making me excessively cautious and perhaps self-righteous. I would have lived very differently and enjoyed a far richer life had I known about it. I might have made different choices in education and vocation.

I could have been a role model and not an example of how badly someone could waste talent. Today I am lonely, nearly broke, and stranded in a hick town in the rural Midwest. What I thought was individual eccentricity is simply expressions of a syndrome. I am now old enough that I have little to which to look forward except for an Afterlife or reincarnation in one of the most merciless of economic orders. I have cursed God for my plight instead of bad luck and the incompetence of others.

I have a conscience; I am not lazy; I have enough self-control to avoid problems that many 'healthy' people get into.  I can be trusted with promises, with assets, with legitimate secrets, with the welfare of vulnerable people, and with safe use of hazardous equipment. I could have found life precious instead of nasty.  

Yes, American capitalism since about 1980 has been perverse... but it still allows some opportunities for talented people who apply themselves well. I could have found a satisfying niche had I known that I had a problem, for I had the means of dealing with something that I understand all too late.

In my case Asperger's was no doubt diagnosed but not available until 1994. It was just considered autism, and the response was getting sent to two different boarding schools, the first of which I came to hate mightily toward the end.  I was quite girl crazy for much of my formative years, and through adult life, although I did try to live as normally as I possibly could, very often women tended to be suspicious of me for reasons I found totally bewildering. Employment for folks with AS today is probably more dire than ever with all the penchant for political correctness. I did have some dating success during the freer, more swinging times I reached my formative years in, but dating itself is more problematic these days. More on this in later posts.

Then I could not have been diagnosed with AS until I was almost 40. Even so, many people start over effectively at age 40. Had I known...

I have hidden the AS well enough (I consider that acting) to just seem a little eccentric. I can play the game of political correctness well enough (but it does not work well in a conservative environment). I basically had to be a liberal because anything else could bring out problems.  I got a job capable of affording almost enough to live on... so I got stuck living with my parents.

I assumed (rightly, it proves) that most people considered me crazy even if I wasn't.

Alcohol and bars scared me... maybe I thought that I had a monster inside that drinking would release, and that I was the person likely to get into a bar brawl for looking too long at someone's wife or girlfriend. Women scared me (fear of the monster inside? Not being a good provider?)

Life has been a cruel joke.