Do people with milder forms of autism suffer more?

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This thread has done very well so far and it is because people have posted intelligent informative comments to help people understand different perspectives. In that sense I think it is very good because we can use this conversation to educate and help people see this topic from perspectives that they might not have thought about before. But we always need to be careful, as with any subject like this, that we keep the posts educational and informative and supportive of each other because other such threads in the past have turned into hurtful and divisive situations. But I think this one has done well and hopefully it will continue to.

It's been nice, I thought at first this thread would go dark and negative, or become about who is worse off, and it has not. Because we are trying to be sensitive to differences and individuals. I often wish for this in the real world!! And I hope we can maintain the kindness that's happening so far in this thread.

I, myself, have always wished to have an extremely severe form of autism with a low IQ. The way I am now, I am not only afflicted with the condition, but I'm fully aware of all of the difficulties I do and will face. I have wished to be so far removed from reality that I didn't really notice or care about my inadequacies.

I don't have a low IQ nor do I have an extremely severe form of autism but for most of my life I was not aware of the difficulties I faced at all. Totally oblivious. (Other people were aware of at least some of them.)

My obliviousness doesn't mean I was totally out of touch with reality -- I think it mostly just means I was never inclined to compare myself to other people in any generalized/abstract way, nor think about what went on in their heads or how they experienced things. It didn't make the hard things in life less hard, nor the painful things in life less painful.

Not noticing and caring about the ways you're different or what you struggle with compared to others is not automatically the same as being way far removed from reality.

I don't mean to diminish your pain, though. I'm guessing your point was just that you would like to not have the awareness you do, because that awareness really hurts you (?) -- and there's nothing wrong with wanting to be free from something that is painful.