I've got Asperger's Syndrome, and also a form of manic-depression.
Shoot, I could go on for days talking about it.
One of the most annoying things I have to deal with is that 90% of people I meet IRL have never even heard of it, let alone what it's about. So you can imagine how often I have to explain it, which is anything but fun because most people don't take it seriously or act skeptical. This is why I still haven't worked up the nerve to actively find and meet new people.
I think the absolute worst part of Asperger's is not the lack of others' awareness, but the severely hindered variety of foods I can eat without having a gag reflex. Not only is it the part people are least likely to believe/take seriously, it's detrimental to both my health and my ability to attend social events or eat with people at all unless I trust that they completely understand. In the star sign thread I said that I hate food, eat it mostly just to live, and would never ever diet, contrary to the Libra description. This is why. My diet is one I cannot afford to limit further. I eat mainly meats, breads/pasta, and dairy, and even within those there are definite limits. The textures in plant matter like fruits and vegetables are almost always the kind to set off the gag reflex. Only bananas, apples, watermelon, carrots, and sweet corn are plants I can eat, and even so, they must be perfect or I can't. I can't eat things with a very soft and creamy texture like soft ice cream, yogurt, etc., or things that consist of "chunks" suspended in a liquid, like stew, soup, etc. Flavors have just as much an impact as textures, so I don't drink fruit juice or eat things with too strong a flavor. I don't eat things with strong odors, either, unless of course it's a good odor.
My other senses are ultra-sensitive, too. I can smell something foul in a room and no one else can smell it. I am more easily put off by smells than others are. Same with noise. I don't think there is another 20-year-old alive who has as low a tolerance for noise as I have. A college student who hates noise sounds pretty far fetched. People get mad at me often because I can't just ignore unpleasant noise. My sense of touch is more acute as well, and thus my skin is a lot more irritable and irritations are much harder to ignore.
One more annoying thing is that most 'neurotypical' folks don't know what social cues are when I explain that I'm still learning to read them, because they don't have to. The ability to pick them up is natural to them, so it's taken for granted.
The last thing is my lack of decent gross motor coordination. This is what absolutely killed me in P.E. growing up, and is one of the major causes of my hatred of competitive sports. I went to a college-prep private school most of my life, and one of the things it emphasized was athletics. Since Kindegarten I had been pitted against all the other kids, every one of which was athletic. I probably would have been, too, if I could actually throw, kick, run, or do any of the other things involved at least on par with average people.
Ok, onto positive stuff. Nothing is without balance, at least in my opinion.
I don't know what my actual IQ is, but I'm fairly certain it's at least above average. I have the ability to almost naturally understand completely new information on a more complex level rather by starting out with it being put into layman's terms. For this reason, I cannot pass information on to others in layman's terms, so as much as I wish I could, I'd be no good for teaching or tutoring. I also almost never need to take notes during a lecture, because most information is automatically committed to memory, and have almost never studied for tests in my life. The downside to this "learning through osmosis," as I call it, is that quite a lot of people don't believe me at first, and because memory persists, I have to deal with hearing things repeated over and over between quarters, and in the past have had to go through entire classes worth of things I'd learned before, like for instance my high school taught quite a lot of things I still remembered from middle school. I guess regular folks really need repetition to learn.
I have the ability to pick up skills all over the map with about the same amount of ease/effort, be they left-brained things like math, science, computers, or other logic-based things, or right-brained things like arts, artisan craft, language, etc.
As many downsides as there are to Asperger's, I wouldn't trade my intelligence for anything. It's who I am.
