Accepting Asperger's into my life.

Well, I’ve come to terms with a lot of things that are different about me in my lifetime. This is probably the biggest, and yet at the same time it’s the smallest given that I have already come to terms with most everything it encompasses. They say the Devil is in the details, but I’m not entirely convinced. The details are all I have when the bigger picture is so horribly overwhelming I can’t even begin to sort it out. So, I broke it down into small manageable chunks, and in doing this I found that the majority of this bigger puzzle was already completed. Aspergers is naught but a word in the face of what I have become in 30 years of living with it, and I understand the purpose of words. In the right hands they lead to understanding, and greater understanding in my life is exactly what I have always needed.

I have made an appointment with my GP to get either a diagnosis or a referral to a specialist. Cherry would like me to go to a Doctor in Rochester but I just don’t think we can afford it right now and its important to me to get this done so I can stop feeling like I am in limbo. It will be easier for me to approach my family with this if I have that professional diagnosis behind me. Unfortunately I don’t spend enough time around them for them to know anything about me. My inner circle have all been told, done some reading and research, and agree whole heartedly that I have all the symptoms. I’m nervous about going to my GP; he has some Doctor/Patient confidentiality issues. I guess that might actually work in my favor this time. He sees my whole extended family and is a bit of a chatterbox in the exam room. Maybe coming from him they might get it. Emphasis on might.

It’s been a bit of a rough week, but I think I’ve finally gotten it through this thick skull of mine that no one is going to turn tail and run just because one word got added to their dictionary. In fact, it has already created a greater degree of understanding between me and most everyone I’ve told. Aspergers is a reason not an excuse and coming to this awareness this late in my life has provided me with a chance to grow up and find the ways to fit in when I need to. By this age those that I really care about are those who have always accepted me for who I was regardless of why I am that way. What social skills I don’t have by instinct I can sort of make up for with experience. I will never be Neurotypical. I will never understand how someone who is NT experiences the world, and I will never be able to explain with any clarity the way I experience it, but the understanding that those differences aren’t in my imagination is all that I need at this point.