Asperger's and Possible Placebo Effects

Not exactly sure where I'm going with this one, or how I'm going to end up there for that matter, but let's find out. When I was 16 I found out I had Asperger's. I didn't do much of anything about it. It was more of like when you get an answer from a calculator; You don't see how it arrived at that number, but that is the answer, plain and simple. It wasn't really until late in college that I looked into what it all meant. I think still to myself what would have been different if I not only knew what I was feeling was 'normal' for me, but why and how could I cope with it. 

So would things have been different for me from 16-22 (and now) if I had at least some idea what I felt was typical for someone like me? I can never know for sure. I think I would have found out how to cope sooner, but would I have used AS as an excuse in the mean time? Well I don't use it as an excuse now for most things, and I like to keep it private unless the person I speaking to is in the know (besides people reading this blog). The one thing I do use it as an excuse for it my inability to read female body language and that is partly why I'm still single. The other part is that I don't have time for that right now.  I think things happen when they are supposed to for a reason, but even I get tired of waiting. 

I think the amount I struggled in the past has made me grateful for how far I've come, mentally that is. Coming up with my own conclusions in the mean time was tough to do, but no one told me how to arrive at them. I was able to think freely and organically. Now I will say that some of my conclusions were wrong and some didn't even get out of the gate, but they were mine and I accepted them at the time. I still accept the good ones now and throw out those that no longer apply. They say knowledge is power. If you come up with your own ideas and people believe in them as knowledge, then does that give you more power? Not if you are humble, which I am. I have mom to thank for that. 

I'd be further ahead of the game if I looked into my own unique set of AS related traits sooner, but I didn't. That is a choice I made that I don't know how to feel about. There are good and bad things that would have been apparent had I examined myself sooner. I only know what happened with the path I took to get to where I am. I like the line that Anton Chigurh gives Carson in No Country for Old Men. "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?" He says this to Carson after he realizes he has trapped him into his death. So what I'm getting at is if I knew how I was supposed to feel about certain things or that it was normal to feel in a certain way, would I still be who I am today? I think I would be, just I would have arrived at certain points sooner than I did. 

As it stands, no one told me how to think. I got here by myself. People may have given me a nudge in the right direction now and again, and I took their advice as an option, but my own thoughts told me which way to go in the end.