Feel like I've lived my whole life wrong, friends are all

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All my life I have thought of myself as special, destined, unique, when in fact there is nothing less unique in the world than to believe that. I was very future oriented believing someday I would have the power to change the world. And in my simplistic zero-sum game the pleasure I denied myself in the present, would somehow be rewarded in the future. In fact hedonism is a skill which either improves or atrophies. Although I did not consider myself I suppose I did by into the nerd American dream mantra: the geek shall inherit the world. Although I pictured an ultra-masculine action hero future-me who would help the underdog. Where the future is here, and the bad guys are doing great, and my life doesn't have to be horrible but its probably going to be lower-mediocre which someone with my delusions of grandeur has a hard time accepting.

In sum friendship is all that matters. Friendship is community, republic, democracy, utopia. I did not like Aristotle for saying material pleasure is necessary to happiness, and praising friendship as the highest form of the good life. But has been proven right, without any sensual pleasure whatsoever I have become useless to any wider cause, and the best tool for the good fight is a wide social network. While I don't want to say all my politics, philosophy, morals were JUST Freudian projection, a lot of it could be described as friendship writ-large. I often like to chastise the Randoids by saying that individualism is the greatest conformity. But the flipside is that anti-individualism is the greatest individualism. And so by becoming so collectivist in an ultraindividual society, I was just continuing my "uniqueness" from childhood.

I thought that it all went wrong in 1st grade. I was just a 5 year old kid bullied by the entire class. Being an outcast badly ret*d my social development. But I looked at my Kindergarden report card and it seems I had trouble making friends from the start even if I wasn't bullied. So that solves that chicken or egg. I escaped into academics, writing fantasy, and worshiping superheroes, adventures, and later history. I had one good friend 2nd-4th grade and he introduced me to comedy. It didn't raise my status much. But then I moved. I took his comedy lessons to heart and just exploded as a wild, crazy class clown. I took it a little too far acting certifiably insane. And I tried to insert my intellectual interests into my "character", a wasted effort on 6th graders. But I certainly got what I wanted. Plenty of attention. Crowds of kids gathered around to listen to my wacky stories. And popular attractive girls literally chasing me. Of course it turned out none of it was real. And I got pretty bitter that I wasn't invited to any parties, and that they were just using me as a clown. So I became very resentful, and went through this whole phase of wanting to be taken seriously. Although clowning was an addictive drug it was hard not to relapse. But in retrospect it wasn't the kids fault. Social life was new to me, and I didn't take the steps to turn attention into real friendship. I made excuses that I was a mysterious character. But an obvious priority should have been to meet kids outside of school. Plus once I was "in" with the cool kids, I ignored the importance of widening my base among the student body. Still my days of fake-delusional popularity were the happiest of my life.

10th-12th grade wasn't too bad. I played several sports, was fairly physically fit. And didn't have to be a buffoon to get attention, since I still had my reputation. So that could be called my golden age. Although even then I didn't have any deep personal relationships, or any informal hanging out, outside of school, that most teens find normal. And a sexual puritanism combined with a Disney fantasy that I would "win" the school princess prevented me from dating during the period it was most possible.

College was a complete fiasco nightmare for me. I hated the frat culture and largely self-isolated myself. I made a few bland attempts to repeat 6th grade but the combination of puritan ambiguity and disdain, and crazyness being less effective on 20 year olds than 10 year olds led to dismal failure. Again its possible that puritanism got in the way of missed social opportunities. I found myself just reminiscing about the glory days of middle school and high school. The irony was I had spent those days dreaming about college.

Self-awareness turned out to be a bad thing. And since life stopped being a comedy, it became a tragedy. And what I wouldn't give for fake attention-seeking popularity again.

And So here I'm in the future. Wanting to be serious my whole life, now on the verge of graduating college and starting the serious world of work, all of a sudden I'm bitter and resentful that I missed out on my youthful days of fun, and suddenly frozen in inactivity. I feel like I missed out on my Tom Sawyer experiences and well never be a complete adult as a result.

Welcome here, at least. I'll leave the sympathy to somebody who's good at that.

I guess ill be the sympathetic one here.

First of all i think im not an aspie, more of an O.C. And came here a while ago and now i came back and stumble upon your story.

Your story is a bit like mine, except im finishing high-school this year, and im a bit more optimistic.

A good concept that im into now, and surely, i think its not new, its that it's ALL a learning experience. Now you went through that stuff once and dont have to do it again.
You could be optimistic too, and think about it: you could get a girl now, go out with her or with frends or even alone, now, you can do sports or activities now, theres nothing stopping you.

At least thats the perspective i try to look things through. A positive one.

I will throw in my two pennies, for what they are worth.

Being an Aspie is not a unitary state--there are good days and there are bad days. There are days when I pass for NT, but come home mentally exhausted from the effort. There are days when I cannot face the prospect of putting on the mask and trying to figure out what people expect of me.

At root, we are not immune from stress. We all react differently to it, though. You are at a very stressful time of life--you are making the transition from college to work; you are entering the job market in an uncertain economic time and you carry the baggage of Asperger's with it.

Rather than focussing on the macro-level, perhaps there's an opportunity to drill down--look at your coping strategies for stress, find out if you are prone to depression or anxiety disorders. Deal with these root issues, and then allow yourself the opportunity to adapt to your circumstances.

enamdar,

You can still be the masculine action hero with the heart of gold who would help the underdog. The only difference between now, and the way you were before, is that you no longer feel self-entitled. That is GOOD, it means that you're growing up and understanding better how you can fit into this world, and what kind of impact you can have in it. You still do have the power to change the world. However, in reality to do so takes a tremendous amount of work and time and personal sacrifice, and I think that realization is making itself painfully clear to you now. It's a mature outlook that you're currently developing, so I think you should be congratulated for making it this far. Things didn't "go wrong" in elementary school, it's simply a matter of life teaching you its lessons the hard way. Everybody, especially Aspies, learns at least some lessons the hard way. Try not to think of your past as all pain and suffering; instead also think of it as something that helped to toughen and wisen you up, so now you don't expect things to be handed to you on a silver platter. Life is hard, and it's that way for most people.

The only thing your realization changes is how to help people out in a more mature, effective and realistic way. It's through your own difficult experiences that you can develop sympathy for others hard up in life, and consequently be even more motivated to support the underdog in this world. That is not a bad thing at all. Personally I'd still think you are very masculine for not quitting, and still trying to help others. Hope this helps some.

Id like to say that i think those two were great answers, too, and if you look closely, the 3 of them are on the same line. So there it goes to deepening and enriching the concept, and looking at the same way of thinking from various points of view.

I hope all this helps enamdar getting a better outlook of things.

Tom Sawyer had experiences (life lessons) and adventures, both, and now you are going to be able to enjoy the adventures ahead almost painlessly while other people who have only been on the adventures yet have some hard lessons to learn. A couple of details are different, but I have been where you were and where you are and I am now where you are headed ...

The challenge is great, but you have been prepared for it.

Enjoy!

Well my main lesson is that conformity is actually a good thing, and following the herd is the spirit of democracy. By railing against MTV culture, I was actually internalizing the rhetoric about being special and unique. When the most rebellious course of action is to consciouslly follow the majority.