Intro Post - Wired Differently

This is a blog written by me for me. I'm a 49 year old woman (as of this writing - well, I'll always be a woman, but the age will change) with Aspergers Syndrome. I am fairly high functioning - I have a job, a home, a husband, friends. I'm involved in social and religious organizations. Many people are surprised when I tell them I'm on the spectrum because I'm good at masking it. At least for a time.

While I suspected I was there for a long time - my oldest brother is severely autistic and I believe there is a genetic component; I've always scored high on the popular tests like the Wired one and I always knew I was different - having it be diagnosed has made it feel very real for me.  And has enabled me to work with the issues it creates.

Please note - I don't want to use it as an excuse but as a way of understanding why I act the way I do sometimes, and how to perhaps change things. Or to live with it if I can't. This self-knowledge has already led to things being a little better.

I'm writing this for me to make order out of my chaotic brain. I'm also writing it because over the last few months, I've discovered other blogs written by women with Aspergers, and this has helped. There isn't much out there for us.  We're adult women, not little boys, and many of us have not been diagnosed until recently. We present differently than little boys both because of our age and our gender. I'm not the only one who learned to mask. So the blogs helped me a lot. I got information and the knowledge that I wasn't alone. It's all anecdotal but at least it exists. So I'm going to add my own anecdotes because we're all different - different sensory issues, different ways of dealing with the world and ourselves, different triggers - even if we have a lot in common. Maybe someone reading this will find I have similar issues and can use my solutions, or give one to me.

I intend this to be random - maybe just a description of a day, maybe a topic that I need to talk about, maybe a dissection of my latest meltdown. And when I get bored, I'll stop. But that's what this is right now.