What do you regret the most about your life with Asperger's?

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I do regret
...saying some incredibly stupid things to some of my past friends

...not demanding more respect from my peers in adult hood.

...letting the theater group I once involved myself with treat me like an idiot.

...doing something very embarasing and noticing it two weeks to a month later.

...purchasing a beat up, unlivable mobile home because mother thinks it would be so "wanderful' if I had a home of my own.

I know better now.

I sometimes regret my inability to socialise properly, and finding out sooner would have been nice, but in all, every step I have taken in life has led me to where I am now, and it could have been a heck of a lot worse. If I had not been the way I was as a kid and adolescent, then I would have taken a very different path and probably been a sheeple.

I regret my inability to regret things i may or maynot regret, if i were able to regret things i may have been able to regret.

well take the risk, and turn off that deafening systemising running in your head! - http://unlearningasperger.blogspot.com/

I despise the way i did not communicate to people how i felt. I let them take advantage of me purely because i did not want them to think bad of me and i thought they were trying to be my friends. For example: on the day of my year 10 exams i had to catch a bus to school. A group of girls surrounded me on all sides and started asking me questions about my big brother and sister who have lower functioning Autism. After they got their ammo they proceded in linking my odd mannerisms with Autism and were saying 'so thats why your such a freak? its cause your got the same problem isent it" and this behaviour contined the whole bus was listening and i couldent get off the moving bus. I was trapped helpless i wanted to jump. When i got off i ran to the toilets and i took a pill bottle from my bag. Inside were 7 painkillers. I swallowed them, tears streaming down my face i felt so alone in an hour of need. Eventually I went to the exam still bawling the drugs had made me drousey and i was amazed it wasent more seriouse than that. I sat and got low scores on my paper and i couldent tell the teachers why i was so upset when they asked. I knew it was my fault for being so guliable

I think just feeling stifled. Yeah, I was really immature when I was younger but a huge part of that was finding out that I had AS back when I was 11 and having the bomb dropped on me that I'd never be anything, would never amount to anything, and might as well give up. Of course I was real lucky in the sense that I was able to make a lot of friends in highschool (good friends btw), really challenge that concept of me, and move toward being who I really wanted to be and getting what I wanted rather than letting other people dictate my identity to me. Of course with that euphoria came a lot of backlash as well, while I was able to self-improve by huge leaps and bounds (dedicated myself to it for 10 years, day in and day out because I really felt it was practically a life and death matter to meet my NT counterparts on the level) I did find that having this means that even if you can read the people around you just fine and even understand social situations the outward expressive impediments it causes still tend to keep you locked in a channel where you can't fully attain that no matter how tough, persistent, or clever you may feel that you are. That and like anyone, I've always had an overwhelming need to be something, be somebody, make it big in one way or another, really try to outrun my past just by doing well and gaining prestige. Kinda got that but then again I realized that I still had a lot to learn about life, a lot to realize about what it is to have a 9 to 5 professional job, and how much of your life time and energy you really sacrifice if you want to make over 60k per year (seems like the more money you make by traditional means the more hours and the more babysitting responsibilities you'll have - ie. controllership for instance).

I think if anything really does grind on my nerves right now though its having certain things, fundamental things, being out of my control and they're things that society really gives no flexibility on. Like any good adult I realize I'm on my own in this world, I need to put everything I can into solving what ever problems that confront me in life on my own, and that for the things that my physiology and neurology literally won't let me have - regardless of how much of an inhuman amount of stuggle I've put into it at times - those things I just have to find a way to make peace with or hope that I can find another avenue to get around those things as I gain in wisdom, about the world in general and about how my own mind and body work.

I regret being unable to understand people, in turn leading to me being socially outcasted.

>>>>Perhaps this is the other edge of the sword I mentioned. Do you think you would have turned out "better" if you had no idea what AS was?

Yes, defiantly, my poor husband, he heard about it at work. People just use that kind of thing as an excuse to be mean. I'm not so sure autism awareness is a good thing. I think it takes some of the mystery out of life looking to personal faults for other peoples wretched behavior.

The hardest part for me is not being able to connect with people the way I'd like, that glass wall that stands in the way keeping me inside myself too much of the time -- and the worst part of that is knowing how people are probably interpreting my distance/quietness, coming to inaccurate conclusions about the reasons for it, which causes them to stay away making a connection even less likely to happen.

Technically I regret nothing. What I mean by this is that I understand why and how I behaved the way I did in the past - realizing that under the circumstances and chain of events (which were beyond my control) it couldn't have been expected that I would react differently than how I did.

I'm not saying that one is never responsible for their actions, I mean that I recognize my faults as a human being and that making mistakes and learning is a process which benefits us as individuals. There is no sense in wanting to take back a mistake in that context, it's about growth.

"To err is human" - To deny our mistakes and refuse to change is foolishness.

With that said, one of my problems when I was younger was to take things too seriously, get angry, and internalize that anger which then manifested negatively in my personality.

I used to be the most unemotional, cynical, serious guy on the planet. It took a lot of thinking for me to overcome that. I look back at those who insulted me in the past only to realize that 99% of them were in fact joking with me - a sign of affection. (and that the 1% who were serious actually needed compassion, not hatred)

Now don't get me wrong, some of my previous friends had other personality traits that were less than admirable (stealing, lying, etc.) but the point is that I misunderstood their personalities because they seemed so insulting to me, I was under the impression that they were truly bigoted and egotistical - which I believe is not the case now. Some of the people they were associated with were however, horrible people. One guy who was involved in drug dealing would lie and steal from his own friends, and I feel sad now knowing that he may still be suffering from this condition. He may even be in prison.

So on that level, I don't exactly regret being angry - but I understand now that they never really intended any harm. I'm not going to speak of past events much more at the moment, because there were specific scenarios (completely unrelated to this issue) which ultimately drove us apart - I don't feel that it could've been prevented. We were young, involved in illegal activities, and an unlucky situation split us apart a year before we reached adult age.

I think about some of these friends now, many of whom I had known since childhood. I just can't describe how sad I feel sometimes, knowing what I do now. It will probably never be the same again. I just wish I could apologize for blocking their calls. As the calls and visits became less frequent, it must've become apparent that I disliked them. I visited a few of the old friends several summers ago, but it just didn't feel right, it felt uncomfortable to a degree, despite the jokes and conversation. Sometimes we just have to move on.

I also regret not being understood by most people. I also regret not being understanding

of some people.

I regret not getting the diagnosis early on and instead went through my childhood with terrible self-esteem and confusion issues that manifested themselves in ugly ways later on.
Oh wait, that wasn't my fault; nevermind.

Basically everything.