When I first had this idea I may have Asperger’s (I’m not fond of that term now) what didn’t make sense to me most was, how emotional I can be at times.

My understanding of Asperger’s was that the person affected is very logical, methodical and get things done without being affected by unhelpful things like emotions. It turned out I couldn’t be more wrong, however that is how loads, if not most people, still understand our condition.

My emotions can be very strong and are often negative. If things are going well I often don’t really feel anything, although I can get elated over something that I perceive to be true that often isn’t. When I was about to publish my novel, when I was in my early 30s, I felt like fantastic thing is about to happen to me and was absolutely over the moon. What happened instead was, I received one, not very positive review (the main character seems fake because people don’t really think like her – while she was thinking exactly the same way I did) and a couple of copies were sold only. It was an e-book so at least the publisher didn’t lose any money on it.

The same thing happened to me on a couple of other occasions: I get absolutely ecstatic about something that is about to happen and then it turns out there’s nothing there. At the same time I find it so difficult to just be happy with what is, and when I am, it only lasts a couple of minutes while it’s very easy for me to feel deeply frustrated.

Partly it is, I guess, due to my family situation. It’s not difficult to experience frustration if you have an alcoholic brother and a dad who had a mental health breakdown when you were 5 years old and never recovered. But I think there is more to that, possibly I’m just naturally prone to frustration and, possibly, things that bring happines to others are not that important to me. But then, what is?