I'm not autistic, but people in my family are--all the men on my father's side of the family, and my sister. Growing up amongst so many people on the scale has given me some "learned traits."

I don't know what a "normal life" is and frankly, I don't think it exists.

Many people on the Autism scale marry and have families. Many have great jobs, even high paying ones. (Silicon Valley is full of people on the scale--i.e. Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates--so much so, companies recruit them.)

Oliver Sacks, the great neurologist wrote a wonderful essay on autism called "An Anthropolotist on Mars". Have you read it? It's collected in a book of his essays an people with neurological differences, also called An Anthropologist on Mars He met and worked with many people on the autism scale, and there are lots of success stories.

Your mother probably has trouble relating to you because people on the autism scale are socially different, and in my experience, women are less tolerant of people who are socially different. They tend to have expectations of way people are supposed to behave (read: social rules). Even worse, not every woman has the same set of expectations and they expect you to read their minds and just magically know what it is they expect. (I'm ADD, which makes me socially different, too, so I empathize about this problem.)

Hang in there, and Google for some Autism Spectrum success stories to read. There are lots of them.

--Ceara1010