No offence taken. I know I'm not normal, never will be. I don't know if I speak for myself perhaps, but it's not something "bad" for me, I kinda like being different. I think most of us would say ourselves that we are not "normal".

Yes, those shutdowns/meltdowns are very characteristic of autism. I have Asperger's I reckon, and personally, I've never really had a meltdown as such (I've had bad moments). It's different for everyone. The autistic adult is also very difficult to place on the spectrum, because everyone has a personal capacity to learn how to fit in socially to varying degrees. My learned behaviour makes me pretty much "normal" socially (vs. when I was a boy) and I've grown in confidence with time, I verbalize almost spontaneously, conversation is pretty good, but all this only came with exposure at places like university, etc. where I got to "practice". With time and age I think one moves up in functioning, but it's because you're learning all the time. You're not going to continue making the same social mistakes if you can understand it doesn't work and you've learnt the "solution". Autistic adults are hard to fathom out, because adulthood smooths it out, just like most problems really.

Yes, they are very tolling on the autistic individual for sure.

Yeah, pretty much, it's very hard work, you're right. Remember, we have to learn how to interact with people and then constantly apply it. It doesn't come natural. All that thinking and consideration during a social setting is very tiring. It's not spontaneous for us, we have to think about everything we want to say and show.

I have avoided many social situations because I just couldn't think of something to say at that moment, so I would walk a wide turn around that person for example so that they don't see me. I just cannot think of anything at that moment.

Yeah, that doesn't sound like Asperger's, it sounds pretty middle to far on the spectrum.

Yeah, this is always hard to explain to people, but it just doesn't work like that. You see, we know as little about our condition as the next person. Each case is unique. She's been trying to figure it out herself, her entire life. It took you months, it took her years.

It's really hard to explain the feeling it creates. You know there is something unusual with you, because you can sense it from the reactions of others toward you, but you don't know why. You don't know what you're "doing wrong" to cause this rift either.

I have the condition and I can't even explain it to you, because I don't have a frame of reference as to what a "normal" me should be. I don't know what I should know about me, because I don't know what's missing. I can't sense or see that. All I know is, I'm not normal because people aren't responding to me like they respond to normal people, and I have weird/different talents nobody else has.

Before I read the diagnostic criteria in the DSM V/IV, I would not even have been able to explain in English what my behavioural characteristics were. It's hard putting into words what you don't really understand.

The best she could have probably managed would have been "I'm weird/different/strange" and that's it.

About the shutdowns, I don't even think she can explain it to herself. How do you put it into words for someone else to understand when you don't even know yourself why these things are happening to you?

It's quite sad, right. Most people on the spectrum are highly caring, loving, feel extremely intensely and deeply, and are extremely gifted at something unusual yet potentially valuable. Most are very creative too. If people only knew what was hidden beneath this external shell of social difficulties, it would change their lives. Sadly, most will probably never be discovered for who they really are and can be, and are buried under a thick layer of ridicule for not being normal enough to "function" in society, thereby limiting the person to a zero basically.

This is why most of us have depression. We can see and feel exactly how people feel towards us, and there isn't really anything we can do to change their minds about us. We would love so much just to reach out and show people something special, if only people would let us. Instead, we are encouraged to "back off" and told it'd be best for us to simply quit, leave the "normal people" alone because our weird attention and attachment freaks them out, and rather not cause any more discomfort in their lives and any more trouble. It becomes an extremely heartbreaking, painful and lonely existence.