Any members out there with Asperger's?

Thank you for all your responses....well...minus the (insert name I cannot call do to Forum rules) that commented and had nothing to do with OP. It has def been a struggle. Your kind words have encouraged me to continue on even when I feel awkward and want to delete all my friends and regress back to solitude.

I was diagnosed with autism and then later just Aspergers when I was young. It was in the early 80s so I had a very few teachers that understood how to handle me and treated me like I was mentally challenged. My fifth grade teacher used the world retard more than once. I went from a d- student to a graduate if honors, and even graduated college first in my class. Aspergers is not a curse that people might think. You just need to be honest with your "limitations" and find a way to work past them. I find it hard to look people in the eyes. So I don't, I just fake it I look at and past them and make sure my eyes are focused beyond them. Really helps fight that.... So hard to explain... Criminal feeling eye contact makes me feel. I get fixated when something is gritty. So I rarely go to the beach and always keep clean sheets on a bed. My wife one night didn't believe that I felt a single grain of salt on the bed so I turned on the light found it in 3 secs and showed her. Aspergers comes with benifits though I am a wonderful out of the box thinking. I have no idea if that is truely linked with my Aspergers or the fact I like puzzles, but I can get pretty creative at times, which is weird because I don't seem to be able to truely picture things in my head. I can recall a rose and describe what it looks like but if asked to close my eyes and picture it. Nope nothing, but if doing a jigsaw I can usually figure out where the piece goes pretty fast. So just know for every thing you think of that might be a short comming you probably have some gift that off sets it. Your brain isn't jacked up, just unconventual to the norm. And with that you hold untapped potiental in areas that might be impossible to others.

This really identifies the differences that men and women experience with aspergers, and yet we have so much in common! "And with that you hold untapped potiental in areas that might be impossible to others." This is so true! It's taken almost 40 years for me to really start to understand how I work. We definitely expect that to be easy for others to get.

Oh the release of breath from my chest reading your post. I do not think ppl fully understand what it is like to live this way, much less be misdiagnosed at a young age. It is a big part of why I ended up here to begin with. Being told you have a Bi polar disorder and than being a guinea pig of sorts whilst they figure out a proper med is very damaging. Especially when none of them work because I was not Bi polar. In the eyes and mind of even a semi gifted child it is hard to understand why everyone is so angry at you and can make you feel very bad which makes seclusion so much easier.

I know it is just as hard for my MFP friends to accept me and my forwardness as it is for me to try and be social in a manner that considers their feelings. No one can know this until they have to mentally prepare and MAKE themselves comment or like a post. There are days I just cannot summon the energy to make myself be social. I would rather just delete everyone and do my thing.....this has happened 2 times since I started my journey in January, and I only returned and started being social because 2 ppl noticed I wasn't very active and said come back. I was there.....but you would never know because I was withdrawing.

Below is a link...plz fast forward to the last 3 mins of the video. There is a high probability that you will be curious enough to find and watch part 1 of the 2 videos. It is very easy to judge me or call me mean or rude if you do not understand why I am the way I am I. My very first forum post was a fiasco! I am retraining my brain..I am perfectly capable of learning these skills and have as a matter of fact. An MFP friend brought to my attention on one of my blogs explaining why she does this things the way she does even though I did not understand it or couldn't find a logical justifications for some of the actions of most of the ppl on MFP. I respect her highly for not just bailing on me. Most people just shut me out or leave because we do not see things the same...which again is almost everybody so seclusion is very easy for me *snorts* It is hard to retrain your brain if you have no subjects to lean on for help. I cannot do this alone even though I want to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dbjFDaK6lk

I've got Aspergers! I only realised it last year, so it's all kind of new and exciting for me. It makes sense of the struggles I've had my whole life, and finally understanding my limits and boundaries has made me feel so much better. I think it's one of the reasons I feel able to try to make a life-change like this one.

May I friend you? I have a long journey ahead of me. Of course I am a decade older than you and you are significantly more over weight than I am, but I think we may be able to give each other positive reinforcement. Since diagnoses I have stopped my last obsession and made this my new obsession. The food aspect of it is no issue as I only see food as sustenance. It is the physical aspect that is very taxing for me. I hate going out in public. I do not own any exercise equipment nor will I waste money on weight loss regimens or books and such. I did not buy those items to get obese I am pretty sure I can reverse my actions by doing the opposite of what landed me here.. It also helps I have stop self medicating.