Sue and I have been quite good at keeping it together with regards to Emily and her disorder.
When Em was diagnosed, it was badly kept secret, so it didn't phase us ALL that much. However, sometimes I let my guard down and give my imagination free reign to think what it likes. This is dangerous.
The first rule of ASD is that no two people are the same, thus comparing Em to people or characters is a childish folly. That, however, doesn't stop the imagination from doing so.
I got to a point in my mind where Emily was an ageing spinster, without a family as she unable to hold a relationship, living hand to mouth and not able to hold down a job. It was a dark place that I didn't want to find myself in, as it was an amalgam of situations I'd gleamed from literature, conversations and pop culture as opposed to extrapolating on any reality that's actually based on Emily.
I'm confident that with Emily's attention to detail, her memory and her love of books we could have an amazingly successful little person on our hands as opposed to a "ward of the state".