Cheated by Asperger's -- Not worth living with!

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I've never been a fan of that argument, either. I got to spend some years studying at one of the better Physics departments in the USA, and the nerdiness level was higher than average, but did anybody, professors, grad students, even any undergrads strike me as being on the spectrum? Nope. Well, ok maybe one or two -- out of about a hundred. Despite the stereotypes, scientists do seem to have normal social skills, and I'd say the vast majority of them are NT.

There was even a big symposium one year and there were Nobel laureates all over the place. And still, I didn't see any "Shine" (the movie about the 'crazy guy' who is accepted and adored because he is a musical genius) type characters around (save Hawking, I guess).

It's a nice thought that you can shuffle your cards around and say, "ok, I suck at these things, but I'm like really good at Engineering/whatever! So, society, I'm not worthless, see?" I was trying to play that game until my brain melted and I was left with my original problems, without the neato-cool talents, and without some even more basic stuff (reading & writing easily).

I gather there is a point of view that isn't totally bleak (and is what some with a ton of disabilities are talking about, I think). I'm not Buddha, though, so getting to see things that way might be a bit beyond me. I try not to think about my memories much, since some of it is bad and most of it is neutral with a pall of loneliness over every minute. I can think of 1 or 2 years where I was truly happy (and sometimes I wish they never happened, because now I know what I'm missing).

OTOH, I discovered this song & band tonight, which makes it a worthwhile day:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-jOEAufDQ4[/youtube]

No I don't think "we all" have similar (emotional) problems to many of the people on this thread. It's just that most of those motivated to post on such a thread will be the ones identifying with the general tone of despair and hopelessness.  I'm only motivated to post to correct the assumption that everyone with these problems must feel miserable about them.  And yes that includes memory problems. Memory may feel as if it's at the core of the humanity of people with few to no memory problems, but plenty of people with memory issues are not all that broken up about them.  

The problem is it's really hard to discuss what my life is like without inadvertently sounding insensitive to people with similar (or even by most measures much fewer) issues who are devastated by them. On the other hand if I say nothing, many people will walk away from discussions like this believing, like they've likely always been taught to believe, that devastation is the only possible response to certain kinds or levels of difficulty. And it's not. Not even close.  

Nor does it take a rare or special sort of person not to be devastated. Nor is the lack of devastation the result of specific talents. (A person whose only reason for happiness is their talents is really not that different from a person who despairs because they think they lack talents. And honestly I don't think lack of talent is the reason for all the despair on this thread. If you read closely you'll see people mentioning their talents then treating them as useless and even describing themselves as talentless.)

But anyway, the common idea that the more impairments a person has, the less happy they are, is not true. And I don't like listening to people act like it is. Because if it was true, people like me would be a rarity. And we are very much not a rarity.  I do believe the suffering expressed on this thread is very real, don't get me wrong, it's just not the inevitable result of a particular kind or degree of impairment. (Except depression itself which by definition is an impairment in happiness that causes suffering.)

I completely hear what you're saying and would agree that its not a matter of sheer causalty whether somoene is happy or miserable. To meet in the middle though I think its dominantly what kind of personality you have. Some personality types will be able to see the glass as half full no matter what or find constant enjoyment in life regardless (Sand is a great example of having a very adaptive philosophy), then you have people who are wired in such a way that life is just agonizing no matter what they achieve. Rather unfortunately I tend to find myself more the later, I realize its completely unrealistic but at the same time I and many other people are finding out just how unmalleable the human core is. Consciousness, sensations, and motivation themselves seem to come from several core axioms for people and most people can very rarely change them, if they can it usually takes certain very precisely aligned events that have the potential to access their core rather than consciousness banging on the structure trying to fix that, which rarely ever seems to make much impact. I say that for the persistantly optimistic as much as those who are persistently seeking or needing more.