Yeah, so this is just my life with #Aspergers.

Have you ever had one of those days when everything seems to go wrong? Now intensify that feeling a hundred times. That is how I live my life. Everyday is a battle for me and sometimes it can get so overwhelming that I have a meltdown. I'm not dealing with just the Aspergers but also with a Learning Disability in Math and a problems with my short term memory. It's very hard for me to learn anything to do with math above a fourth grade level. I can do it but it takes much longer to do so than a normal person.

There are a lot of myths about people who have Aspergers Syndrome that harm the reputation of the person who has this disorder. Let's face it, people don't like what they don't understand. And being a woman with Aspergers is very different from a man with Aspergers because women with Aspergers can express emotion. We just don't know how to express our own. We are the great con artists. We tent to mimic what other people are feeling in order to survive. The problem is most people, unless they know the women well, never know how that person truly feels.

Another problem is our expression of thoughts and feelings. We have feelings but we just don't know how to express them properly. Females with Aspergers tend to bottle their feelings inward while men can express their anger through violence. A woman's anger is focused inward. I can be very hard on myself. So hard that it is unwarranted. I have problems with negative thoughts, negative self esteem and negative self talk. I drive my emotions inward until I have a meltdown. I don't meltdown very often but when I do I tend to shock people because they never expect if from me.

Life can be truly overwhelming at times for me, like yesterday. I can get overstimulated very easily and that's what happened to me yesterday. Writing is a great emotional release for me. All of the frustrations I wrote about in Elsa from Franklin's point of view are the same frustrations I have had in my own life.

My life has been a struggle and there are people who truly know me that say I am a strong woman. Sometimes though, I don't want to be that strong woman anymore. I just want to crawl up, forget the world and dive inward. I need those moments where I can escape. The problem with that is I can very easily get stuck in that state. You see, the world is a very scary place for a person with Aspergers. We don't understand this world and it scares us. We operate with different values and we don't understand social cues. We are blunt, too honest and can easily insult a person without understanding that we have insulted that person. There have been plenty of social situations where I have just been dumbfounded when someone has been insulted or when something goes wrong. Thankfully, there are people in my life who help me through those situations.

Like Franklin, I have a spouse who loves me so much he takes care of me. Long term relationships,
jobs and friendships are very hard for a person with Aspergers to keep because we don't get the social situations. It takes a very unique person to stay by our side through thick and thin. I am very fortunate to have a spouse, an aunt, uncle and best friend who help me. I value those people greatly.

Life can be difficult for the people who support the person with Aspergers as well. Let's face it, we are not easy to live with. When I wrote Elsa I took that into consideration. You see I'm not only a person with Aspergers but I'm also someone who has been a caregiver. People with Aspergers make very good caregivers because we have a very tender heart and are overly sensitive. We are not self-centered but are selfless. My husband would tell you that I would give everything we own just to help someone. The problem with that is there have been plenty of times when people have used that against me. I am a doormat because I can't tell when people are being genuine with me or just trying to use me. My friends and family tell me that I am just too nice. But I can't change that. It's just who I am.

I'm not a threat to society. I'm not someone to be feared. I'm someone to be loved, encouraged and cherished. I am a woman with Aspergers.