Wrong Planet name and Hope

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I love it. I'm not a freak, just a foreigner. Big difference. But I"m not feeling it yet.

Back in the old days when I was young, David Bowie starred in a movie "The Man Who Fell to Earth." He was an alien who looked human, and eventually became trapped on Earth, unable even to remove his human disguise. I feel just like that. Toward the end of his hopeless incarceration, he comments "there's always hope." I always interpreted it as his WISH that there was hope for his return to his Right Planet, when really there was none. I wish there was hope, too -- hope that I can someday, somewhere belong, no longer a foreigner. Even my own mother, my flesh and bone, doesn't understand that I'm not her child, neurologically or spiritually speaking. What kind of hopelessness might she be feeling in her confusion and desire for understanding? The opposite of mine, the converse of mine, the reciprocal of mine? Or something entirely foreign to mine? Who can say?

How do you turn hopelessnesss and loneliness into pride of distinction?

there seems to be a great wall of misundertanding between us and everyone else. This is one of the many issues that you will have to deal with during your life. If you stay with it, if you are able to apply yourself to fitting in to society, whilst remaining you, then you might find some happiness. Glad you are on WP. The name is apt. We are, indeed, on the wrong Planet.

Welcome to WP,remember to psot,never post.

Welcome to WP!

Tim

You are of course, quite right. For most, having Asperger's is very much like being an alien on the wrong planet, or a refugee from another time. This feeling of alienation and displacement is not subjective; it is quite factual; it is not opinion, but realism.

Consider the possibility that this planet, the one we now inhabit, rightfully belongs to us.
Neuro-typical individuals or 'normal' people, being greater in number, have convinced those with ASD that there is something wrong with us, and have even treated ASD as a disease. If ASD is a disease then indeed we are a disease!
Consider that ASD is a step in human evolution, that is takes five or more series of genetic mutations to occur in order for a human system to evolve, and only one series of mutations to create a disease. For Asperger's to occur, it takes exactly five or more genetic mutations, all in series and determined by nature itself. If ASD were a disease, then the alleles that cause autism should have been either eliminated or depressed long ago, this has not occurred, and such instances of ASD are increasing. As humanity evolves, so cases of Asperger's increase, even with awareness of the disorder becoming more prevalent. Thus, the autistic spectrum is not simply a mutation, but a step in evolution itself.

“Jim Sinclair, who holds a BA in psychology, has autism himself, and also advocates for those with autistic disorder: Autism isn't something a person has, or a shell that a person is trapped inside. There's no normal child hidden behind the autism. Autism is a way of being. It is pervasive; it colours every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emotion and encounter - every aspect of existence. It is not possible to separate the autism from the person – and if it were possible, the person you'd have left would not be the same person you started with.”
Matt Ridley, author of Nature via Nurture, claims that those with Asperger’s disorder: “are more than twice as likely to have fathers and grandfathers who worked in engineering.” Ridley also says that on a “standard test of autistic tendencies, scientists generally score higher than non-scientists and physicists and engineers score higher than biologists.”

We have larger, heavier brains and a greater capacity for processing and interpreting information and sensory data at levels as yet not understood by NT (normal) individuals.
Conditions such as autism and Asperger’s raise controversial questions on normalcy in society. If autism is proved conclusively to be biological, there is consequently nothing about autism that can be “cured”, without also changing the person in fundamental ways.

As far as evolution is concerned then, it is not we that need to change, but those who are left behind, the normal and the typical, the neutral genes.