First of all it's amazing and exciting to see your book in print - wow!

As far as all your feelings you mentioned, here's my take on it. Disclaimer...these are my personal opinions, not provable fact, but fact to me!

The one thing every person on the spectrum gets real good at, is feeling incompetent. It really begins to dominate weather you realize your feeling it or not, and spread into all other kinds of feelings....anxiety, fear, worry.

And that feeling of incompetence comes from so much trying and failing - but also from such a crappy ongoing appraisal system. Eventually it becomes engrained in our hardwiring. This can happen to nt's too, but it always happens to aspies. When we get even the smallest amount of success it's like....'ok, when am I going to screw this up too'. If someone is friendly to me, I sort of await the 'end' immediately. Cause I know it can't work. Never does, and I'm never sure why.

It's like, I know I'm a good person, and I can think of lots of positive things about myself, so it's not exactly self esteem that's the problem (although that's pretty beat it's getting better and better). It's that I seem to feel everytime I try, I'll fail....and I think a lot of that feeling comes not just from failing, but from a crappy ongoing appraisal system, which everyone on the spectrum also has. You know what I mean?

I know for a fact everyone here likes you, enjoys your posts, wants you to keep coming and keep posting and not leave ever. It's clear to me you are a genuine and good person. I love that you post vunerabilities, and if that was something you couldn't do here, then this place really isn't that great...but you can. I've never been sorry for posting my vunerabilities and I've really gone over the edge a few times online, and always been tremendously supported. And the funny thing, that is HARD when you're not used to it. It's like, you keep waiting for the preverbial shoe to fall so your relationship here with everyone is over cause once again, you messed up. You feel (or I felt) that I must be accidentally tricking people, they think I'm this person that deserves them and I don't...I mean, not so much anymore, but in the beginning, it was actually HARD to deal with so much acceptance. Also, as in real life, it took me a really long time to feel comfortable knowing online social parameters...ya know? Like, I just didn't know quite what to say, how to say it, if I should say it. I spent a lot of time worrying about, well about everything negative.

I think you are brave to post your worries and fears, and I hope you feel supported by me now, and always. No matter what you post about, the genuine good man that you are always shows itself in your writing. That's what I like so much about you. You seem pretty devoid of any meanness and vengence and all that mess. Your book....hey, face it, you did it! And it's going to sell, and you're going to do the poetry reading thing around people, and you're going to succeed at that too! If you think it will help, tell yourself that..."It's going to be ok". I learned self talk maybe in my late 20's. Someone told me to tell myself that, and over time, it really started to help instead of going over all my thoughts of doom. I would think, the genuine and good man that shines through here, also shines through in real life...and that is why you will succeed and build on that more and more feelings of competence.

And anyway, where else can you go but here to be surrounded by so many women you lucky guy, hee hee.

Mili