Getting old gracefully

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Good thread! Growing older isn't necessarily anything like the cliches you so often see coming from the media or from unenlightened younger people. It's true we can't always do physically what we used to do, but I think we make up for it with a more mature perspective, less worrying about the small stuff, and a better focus on interpersonal priorities.

On balance, I think it's a fair trade.

Myself, I've become a rootless vagabond, wandering the American Southwest in a 20-ft travel trailer. I pick up and go whenever and wherever I feel like it. Sometimes I'll stay in a place a month or two, other times I hit the highway after only a week. This lifestyle is great for an Aspie because I don't have to socialize any more than I care to, and if things start to get sticky with a particular group, I just hitch up and move on. Perhaps that's taking the "easy way out", as some have suggested to me, but if it is, I don't especially care. I have "friends" all over the Southwest that I hook back up with in the course of my yearly "circuit", and that satisfies my need for personal contact.

I still do a little IT work remotely, and in combination with my retirement money, that leaves me cozily comfortable financially. And when I say "comfortable", I don't mean affluent. Far from it. But I've learned that I don't need 75% of the materialistic crap that I used to think was necessary, and instead I get by with a rather minimalist lifestyle that leaves me wanting for nothing. I could probably still work fulltime if I really wanted to, but I treasure my freedom far too much now to ever give it up.

It's a freedom that took some getting used to. For many months after I moved into my little home on wheels, I would wake up each morning and immediately start thinking about what I had to get done that day. Thankfully, I'm now past that mental barrier. I sleep when I'm sleepy, I eat when I'm hungry, I work when I feel like working, I goof off when I feel like goofing off.

Living this way could be considered self-indulgent and self-centered, I suppose. But damnit, I've earned it. I spent nearly 60 years living my life the way I was supposed to live it. Now it's time to live it the way I want to.

^
+1

bumping this thread. Hope the OP is doing all right, and all of us who have grown older.
(edited because of annoying smiley)

Last edited by mntn13 on 23 Mar 2012, 5:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think Mountain Laurel has a point. As I see it life for anybody who wants to push past complete medicority is not easy, and that includes NT's. I need an expert to put me right on this, but maybe so many of us want excitement and we choose suffering for our emotional survival. I do think everybody, NT and Aspie needs a dream, a vision to keep us on track and motivated.

I agree, Grebels, and Mountain Laurel. Just adding that for those who can see past mediocrity and yet not achieve it; they(we?) nevertheless are deserving of inner peace whether we are aging, (or not yet aging).
My dream - without going into way too much detail here has definitely has brought me to a point where I am climbing out, albeit slowlly, of a pit of depression. I am not able to judge whether the world at large will see the results as extra- ordinary, but it doesn't matter. I find that to be a false or even debilitating goal, because it saps energy from my focus.

This is so true! I spent the majority of my adult years trying to conform, always mourning about my single state, trying to keep up in the corporate world, etc. I found true love at 51. I am engaged to get married for the first time. We have just bought a house, becoming homeowners in our fifties, and a first for both of us. Just goes to show that we don't have to do things in the order dictated to us by society and social "norms."

And yes, my body isn't what it used to be. I used to jog, take ballet classes, as well as enjoyed long walks. Now, due to health issues I tire very easily. My posture has gotten horrible from sitting in front of the computer when I am too ill to do anything else but lie down. But only by accepting where we are, can we then go anywhere else with enthusiasm and a clear perception of our limitations. I do feel sorry for those aging movie stars who keep getting plastic surgery in a desperate attempt to hang onto some long outmoded image of what they used to be.

Good for you!




Yeah, I agree. I'm sure it's tough working in an industry so dominated by the obssession with youth. I think it's rather grotesque to look half your age, but if that's the accepted norm for your peer group, well, I guess that's what you do.

Sadly you are describing me too accurately, empty, alone, lonely with my cats and phone never rings and the rest. The last party i went to was over 20 years ago

Most of my life (I'm 51 now) was desperate loneliness that I tried once in awhile to fill, but would eventually just accept again as the price of avoiding social requirements and protocols I couldn't comprehend or couldn't stomach. Even when I had a friend or two (and I often did) I was still deeply lonely because I knew I never "fit" anywhere (though I didn't get why until 4 years ago discovering Aspergers). That changed 8 years ago when I met my spouse, an NT who adores me even when I don't know what that means, and who makes up for my lack of social skills even as a I make up for her lack of computer skills. My loneliness is almost gone, filled by her. What remains is, it seems, just existential angst and sadness for the pain I've had to live through in my life.

I think that's what I've come to now. Yes, my body isn't doing so well, but I think that's secondary. I don't have depression - even though it's in vogue these days to call anything not happy or angry "depression". I just have a lot of sadness. My "midlife" crisis is about figuring out what matters in life when my special interests ended up mattering very little, when I've accomplished nothing my brains could have led me through (blocked by poor life circumstances), and when my spouse is my only family left (literally).

I understand now - as I never could 10, 20, or 30 years ago - what we lost when we gave up "elders" in our push to be a modern society. I sense that the midlife crisis is the fire we all walk through on our way to real-world-wisdom, to having the deep answers for those behind us in years - but we approach our "elder" time now with dread and confusion because our culture feasts in "intelligence" even as it craps on "wisdom". We too easily see nowhere to go forward into something better, and too rarely find older "elders" to coach us into our new head-space.

I'm now reigniting my special interests, exploring new ones, and sharing more of myself as I can with younger folks (mostly young adults) who've had garbage in their own lives. Sometimes feeling better about one's life requires helping someone clean up even a small corner of theirs - or so I've discovered for my own self.

I must say that your post really resonates with me!

You could have been describing me! Except my first inkling of being AS came in 2004; I was 46 then. The actual diagnoses came in 2007. And, the love of my life came in 2009. We are both AS, except that his is a lot milder than mine. In my then social life, I used to have a friend or two as well, but usually discovered that these people were only befriending me out of curiosity or pity, or else I would tire of them or find them stifling in some way. Along would come a new friend, and the same cycle would play out until I caught on.

Again, I can relate. My spouse will have to fill the bill for family, since they mostly ignore me. They have never, ever understood me and even with this diagnoses, I don't think they really understand. I lost both parents three years ago, and while I hoped that this loss however painful would bring me and my siblings closer, it never happened. I have chronic health issues which preclude me working, so my social life has really shrunk now.

This is so true. I feel that our roles, as we approach elder status, is to lead and coach those younger and inexperienced. We have much to offer, but society has lost its way in regards to its elderly. Youth rules, and old age is something to be dreaded, hated and feared as well as cosmetically eradicated as soon as it shows up.

And this is laudable. Really, it is all we can do, when you think about it.

Well, I'm liking 34 a whole heck of a lot better than I liked 14.

Or 24, for that matter.

I've got a handful of friends-- a tiny handful, 4 to be exact. But they're good friends who like me for who I am. Mostly. There's one NT chick who's frankly kind of a catty b***h, but she's fun to get drunk and talk about kids with and anyway I sort of feel sorry for her as Hubby and I are the only people she can bring herself to trust.

I've got a spouse and kids. They're all right most of the time. They fill up my days. Dunno how long I will have them for-- I know he needs more than I can give him and one day he'll wake up and realize he can have it, and that I wouldn't stand a chance in a divorce proceeding-- but I try to enjoy each day.

If-- or when-- I lose them, I think maybe I'll find a menial minimum-wage job and stay in homeless shelters (or maybe hope Hubby gives me our tent) until I get enough together for a beat-up truck and a camper shell and some camping gear.

Then I'll either head out to New Mexico and see if they'll let me chop up meat and scoop wolf hybrid poop in exchange for a place to live and use of the kitchen facilities on this wolf hybrid sanctuary out there, or I'll drive around to places like Detriot and New Orleans and stuff-- places that are in trouble-- and see if I can make myself useful volunteering to haul off rubble and pound nails and whatever other stuff needs done to try to clean up the mess.

Not much of a life?? I guess it's all in how you choose to look at the life you're living. It's three hots and a cot, people around, meaningful work-- sounds OK to me.

I am so glad we have found wrong planet and love my sister view of our minds are just different operating systems and we all try to connect as we can with an often incomprehensible world on all sorts of levels but best of all these forums help with feeling less alone, just separated in space.

I'm 35 in May and I have to say if it weren't for meeting my husband my life would've been a worse fate than death itself. He keeps me from losing it and becoming a complete hermit.

I'm looking forward to old age.

I've felt such pressure for most of my life. Pressure to succeed in school. Pressure at work. Pressure to support my kids, both with as much time as possible and as much money as possible. For better or worse, my parenting will be done in ten years and then I'll be free to live the life that I want.

I never exercised until a couple years ago. My body is 48 but feels like it's 30. I'm not immortal, but I'm optimistic that I'll be able to enjoy good experiences in the future.

i'll gladly trade you a bit of my old age, for a bit of your relative youth.