Can't really pick a choice.
The Oddsmakers say we're doomed to a sad, lonely life, probably on welfare and/or in continuing care. So they told me anyway.
I have four friends, acquaintances, a husband, four kids, a car (and a van), and a house that we own outright. My husband says this is at least half my doing. Some experts have stated the "fact" that all I have done is supply the womb and anything else must have been due to someone else's agency.
I would like to find the agency who supplies the invisible, silent, free housekeeper. Also the Errand Fairy and the Homework Elves. I think I could probably craft one hell of a niche for myself as their agent.
My father managed to marry and have a child (obviously). She did leave him (my mother I mean-- although I note that she later realized it was a mistake and begged to come back, but breaking an Aspie's heart isn't something you can take back), and he did spend most of his life alone; however, he did also manage to remarry and spend the last 10 years very happy. He also held the same job for 30 years (coal miner). He owned his home and truck outright and had a spotless driving record.
He was a damn good father and I have never known anyone who has been missed so much by so many.
I have a cousin on that side who I think is also an Aspie. Alone and happy. I think the only formal job he has ever held was as a wildcat oil driller in Wyoming, but he's not exactly unemployed. He has done all kinds of jack-of-all-trades stuff. He has been a handyman, a good seat-of-the-pants carpenter, a golf coach, and now has bought himself a $10,000 personal saw mill and gone into business as a one-man milling company. He built his own house and in his spare time is a self-reliant survival farmer and Grade A hick.
My grandfather (mom's side) also managed to marry and have kids and hold a job (40 years as a coal miner, with intermittent stints and second jobs as a handyman or janitor and 10 years as a church trustee after he was forced out of the mines by his heart and the steel collapse). He was too nervous to drive a car and I don't think he was EVER happy, but that had more to do with his self-hate and constant worry over being normal enough than with having Asperger's itself.
My aunt (mom's side) served in the WAC for 5 years before she got married and had two kids. I don't think she should have been a mother-- she was competent enough but openly says that she did it for her husband and does not and did not like children. I feel bad for both them growing up like that and for her being something so labor-intensive that she did not want to be. She held a job for the stints of years that she needed to and now works as a volunteer in a clinic. They are still married and getting ready to retire to Nevada.
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"Alas, our dried voices when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass, or rats' feet over broken glass in our dry cellar." --TS Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
18 Mar 2014, 5:24 pm
