Those extremely high-functioning?

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There's no line between high functioning and normal because they're the same thing. If you're high functions it means you're normal.

I could interpret your post in two ways:
1. If you are high functioning enough to live in the society, you are not autistic;
2. You can be both autistic and "normal" because the definition of "normal" should be broad enough to include several excentricies.

Which one did you mean?

Yes you can be both autistic and normal. If you live a normal life then you're effectively normal, even if you're autistic.

Thanks for clarification.
However, I would add one thing, often concerning HFA females:
You are normal if you are living a normal life as the one who you are, not roleplaying and masking 24/7. The latter can go on for decades to end up in a spectacular mental breakdown.

I am high functioning. They called it "prominent aspergers". I am "normal" but I am "weird". No one would have guessed before the diagnosis. I cannot read most non-verbal, and I have a hard time guessing how someone feels. Eye contact is a chore.

The most tragic thing I discovered after the diagnosis, is that people connect with me, but I have a hard time connecting with them. I have made people sad

I recently discovered the less stressed I am, the easier it is for me to empathize. The more stressed I am, the easier it is to open up about my own feelings about myself and others. But it took extreme levels of stress and non-stress for that to trigger inside of me. It's like I suddenly figured out how to connect, but the experiences are all on an entirely different playing fields. So I feel like because I don't experience all of those feelings at the same time, that is why I never feel the "full connection".

Now it makes me wonder if NT people experience all of that at the same time plus more?


But back on topic, it was the way arguments unfolded that got me my diagnosis.

Anyway. I am happily married. Have two wonderful boys. I bought my first house when I was 20, and am now looking at investment properties. I am a financial wizard and I like to play the stock market and invest in passive income. My ultimate dream is to own enough rental homes, all managed, and live off the rent so that I can be lazy and anti-social forever!

But right now I'm in the baby steps phase of investing.

Woah! That's pretty young!

In the last five years, my level of functioning has improved tremendously. I am still not where I should be, but I'm working on it.

I am high enough functioning that I not only support myself but a disabled husband, but my meltdowns/emotional problems and muscle weakness puts me in the disabled category. I do drive, pay bills, cook, go shopping and me and my husband are finally independent completely.

I guess it could be seen as that. I give presentations, run meetings, volunteer, lead groups. It’s hard to consider myself high functioning because I’ve been unemployed for too long, and everything that makes me pass for neurotypical is consciously thought out, so it’s exhausting. At a training event I delivered for Project Aspie I was asked that, because it seemed like my movements, eye contact, and everything was neurotypical. So I had to confess that I studied it all at great length, like an actor (in fact I was an actor and miss that career) so gestures, eye movements, voice, language, hygiene, everything, it’s all thought thru, like I’m on stage.

When I’m home with my cats, I’m a mess. Only my cats seem to understand me. In fact I think 1 of them, Emily, might be in the spectrum, not a joke.

I am not I am a Moderate Autistic.

Yes. Perhaps if you found less success in life, it's because you expended a significant fraction of your energy on passing. Yet those around you will judge your success relative to others as though we were all playing with the same hand.

No, I have moderate autism.

^^^Hi there,

I haven't seen you in a long time.

Yes, me to.

I have been busy.

It's always better to be busy than to be idle.....