If you don’t know who the Tau’ri are, shame on you.  You should be watching Stargate!  But I’ll save that discussion for another blog.  The point of this one is to say that I no longer feel like an alien.  After feeling estranged from others for most of my life (but disguising it well), I finally feel like part of the human race.  All of this thanks to my diagnosis of Asperger’s (1 in 250 people has an autism spectrum disorder).  For most of my life I have been told that I am different, and that I am different on purpose.  My parents accused me of being weird to embarrass them, or just to be difficult.  My therapist (the one who laughed when I asked if I had autism) said I enjoyed being unusual.  But that’s not true—I have always wanted to fit in, to be normal.  And the fact that I could not, or at least could not for very long, has always been a source of distress for me.  I have been lonely and sad for much of my life.  But Asperger’s has freed me from much of that angst; I realize that I am a part of the autism community, and I can feel normal there.  I need not feel ashamed about my weird habits or interests, and I don’t need to try to fit in—I just do.  What a precious blessing.

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