The Contradictory Nature of Asperger's

Racing season is here! I head to my second race of the year tomorrow. However, as excited as I am, today’s blog is going to use the most traditional of all things in motorsport, the checkered flag, as a concept to describe Asperger’s. The thing about the checkered flag is that it’s so contradictory. In the top corner is one color and if you go just far enough, you’ll reach another, but then keep going and you’ll be back to where you started and so on and so forth. What does this mean? My experience in having Asperger’s is one of stark contrasts and it gets tiring. Here’s what I mean…

I want to be part of the social world but the social world tires me.
I want to be part of a team, but I often can't see the concept of teamwork.
I have extremely good senses, especially when it comes to hearing, but I often wish I could turn it off.
I want to be alone but being alone is extremely isolating.
I need to be perfect in the things that I do but there is no satisfaction at achieving perfection.
I can give some incredibly witty remarks but often miss out on when someone is being witty.
I want to make sense of the world but often the more I know about things the scarier the world is.
Being in my Kansas is awesome but I often wonder what life is like out there.
I yearn to be normal but normal seems so boring.
I can do some things great and many things not so great.
Hard things come easy and what is easy to most comes at a high degree of difficult to myself.
I want to care about others but allowing myself to feel is overwhelming.
I want to tell others what they mean to me but expressions of any kind are paralyzing.


Do you get the idea by now? It's a constant struggle to be wanting both sides of the coin; to want something but to know if I had it the results would be just as difficult as living without it. This is why I stand by the title of this post in that living with Asperger's, at least for me, is living a life full of contradictions.