Help me get why I should feel good about who I am

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I'm a middle aged aspie who's only known about being AS for the last few years or so, but who hasn't really understood what that meant and how it's impacted and messed up my life until the last month or so.

Right now I'm working a pretty bottom-of-the-barrel job because I couldn't take the stress of higher paying jobs in the field I'd been in for decades and I walked away 5 or so years ago. Now, I make mostly nothing, and between the economy having tanked my previous field, and my age making it ludicrous to go back to school, and the cost of schooling making it ridiculous to take out US $20,000 in student loans just to get another US $10 an hour job (making not enough to even realistically pay back the loan) - which is what I'm making now without having gone back to school, and big bills hitting me lately as well - I'm pretty much looking forward to just more crap work with no advancement for the rest of my working life. But I'm also having more and more issues the last several years with my ASD - more problems being able to fake "normal" to get and keep a job, more problems with sensory stuff, more problems handling stress, etc. Right now, I have crappy insurance that won't pay for any real therapy or neuropsych testing that might help me get back on my aspie feet, and I've been told by knowledgeable folks not to let this insurance company know I have ASD anyway, since they will use it against me in the future. But I also make "too much" to qualify for the "free" services in town. So I'm just pretty much getting more and more acquainted with Jose Cuervo to soften it when I'm feeling really down and defeated and unable to come up with resources that will help me feel better about who I am, and about what I can still do or be.

I hear all the time that I should be "proud" of who I am as an aspie, etc. But I'm having a real hard time lately figuring out how to do that when it's my ASD that's always made everything so hard in my life, and which in the last several years has made my life really not seem worth bothering with.

How do folks feel "proud" or "ok" with who they are, if who they are is blocking having a life without being defeated?

Sweet Pea hugs

i just look forward to heaven, and i know that i have to stick it out "down here on earth" this lifetime in order to earn a better spot in heaven.

One of those unanswerable questions...

I'd say there are roughly these two alternatives to feel good about yourself
- you find a way to enjoy life enough so that the downsides feel like they're a price worth paying
- you find something that is so fundamentally important to you that it'll enable you to endure whatever it takes

Now what you do if both don't seem to be an option, I don't know...that's where I'm stuck myself. So maybe you should try listening to people who are better at being happy, if you can.

To the Loneliest One-

"There is in certain living souls
A quality of loneliness unspeakable
So great it must be shared
As company is shared by lesser beings.
Such a loneliness is mine; so know by this
That in immensity
There is one lonelier than you."

[Theodore Sturgeon- 1918-1985]

"Message found in a bottle, sender unknown. Still alive or long dead. The last of his species or a traveler marooned on alien shores. Perhaps in the end, all that matters is this: that even to loneliness, there is an end. And for those who are lonely enough, long enough, a message cast adrift on the darkest beaches...of the Twilight Zone."

You are not alone. It might not be very reassuring because being an aspie in an NT world can be very lonely but, there are others out there asking themselves the same questions. Coming here can be a step in the path to understanding how it affects you and figuring out what you should do about it.

As far as how it has messed up your life, ignorance, and intolerance in our society share an equal blame.

In my search for consolation I've concluded that the way in which being an aspie has affected one's life isn't entirely your fault. It's not our fault that ignorance of ourselves left us at a disadvantage in the power dynamic of a hyper-competitive society. I'm not saying it's an excuse or that we should forget how it has affected us but if nothing else it's a pretty damn good reason to forgive yourself.

It's what you do after you have shed the veil of ignorance that will be even more important.