Published on 12, July, 2020
I've come to a point in my life where, after looking back over it - at the things that have happened, the things I've done and not done, the things I've achieved and not achieved - I can begin to make a reasonable judgment about what's likely to happen with what's left. I have far more behind me than I have in front of me. My physical health is reasonably good for a man of my age. I could carry on for a fair number of years yet before things start to break down physically. But I know that, when they do, I won't want to endure them for very long. I don't want to end up on medications for life (I already have one that I have to take). I don't want to lose my independence, and need support. I don't want to be reliant upon others. When my time comes, I'll take my own action to obviate those things.
I have just over seven years to go now before I will be able to retire. It's unlikely, therefore, that my personal circumstances are likely to change very much. There isn't a great deal I can do to improve my financial situation. The hours I work aren't full-time, but they're as much as I feel able to manage given the current state of my psychological and emotional health. Recent events have shown that my mask is beginning to slip: that after a lifetime of trying to get by in a world which has rarely made much sense to me, I'm reaching the limits of my tolerances. I'm gradually burning out. I'm beginning to break down. Not physically yet... but the physical and psychological breakdowns will work in tandem with one another, of that I'm sure. I've already done myself some damage through drinking, which I've done increasingly heavily over the last ten years. I struggle with stopping it. I've had some periods before of not drinking - a week, two weeks, a month - but I've always gone back to it. Because it's really the only thing that relieves the anxiety I feel most of the time. An anxiety which I've carried with me for most of my life, from my earliest days at school. I have to weigh the damage it does to me against the 'benefits' of feeling temporarily relieved and happy - free of anxiety, able to laugh, able to enjoy myself.
So... what do I think I have ahead of me? Over seven more years of work, with the burn-out accelerating all the time. My financial position doesn't give me much room to change my circumstances in any definite or positive way. I cannot afford to move. I cannot afford to set money aside. There's nowhere else I can go. I have a job which gives me a good sense of satisfaction and life-purpose, but I'm finding the demands of it increasingly exhausting. I simply can't see myself being able to do it for another seven years. Meanwhile, given my age, my options are becoming more and more limited. If I end up having to leave this job through ill health before I can find something else, I face the benefits system, which many of us already struggle with. I had it once before, and it was certainly no fun. It's not the 'easy cop-out' that some of the tabloids like to portray it as. At my age, too - and given my limited skill set - finding something else, and something different, won't be easy.
My Asperger's diagnosis has a double edge. It enables me to make sense of my life. But it also enables me to see how my life has been 'limited' by it. I'm not saying that I wish to change the way I am - but I think it could all have been so much easier if I hadn't been born this way. The positives and negatives of it fly around in my head all day - like leaves in a whirlwind.
To many, I would sound ungrateful in saying this. Focus on the positives. I don't have money - but I also don't have debts. I'm in a location I'd like to leave - but I have a job and a roof over my head. I don't have friends or any close family - but I have this community, and I have my cat. Many people have far less than this, and are much more worse off. I should take reassurance from that. But it doesn't always work that way, does it.
I'm not saying anything that anyone else here doesn't already know. It's a common enough experience. But it helps, though, to write it down. Maybe it helps to share it, too.
Thanks for reading, if you have.
I have a lot of sympathy with this. I often feel I'm trapped in a circumstance that I can't find a good way out of as much as I would like to. But we're sort-of comfortable - even if it feels all somewhat precarious. Certainly I've reached the point a few times where I've thought "If I could just go to sleep now and not wake up I'd take that choice." If I had the option of living my life again, knowing what I know now, I'm not sure I'd chose that option.
The work thing is difficult for me. Missing a trick I didn't buy a house when I probably could have done, so unless I can come up with something magic, am probably stuck with renting. Realistically I'm not sure that retiring is ever going to be an option. In some respects that not an issue, because not having something to do would drive me nuts, but it would be nice to be able to chose what I do . It was also be nice to have just enough financial independence to be able to pick and chose work as it appeals to me.
I've been wondering though if we're at the start of the whole LGBT thing however many years ago. Maybe our job on the planet is to do what we can so that future generations have an easier time of things?
Yes, this is interesting. I'm relatively 'comfortable' - though certainly not comfortably off. And it does all feel precarious. The least thing could set off a chain reaction that brings it all tumbling down. That's almost what happened at work, and I still won't know for a while until it's over yet. If, when I go back, I don't feel comfortable and can't manage it... then I don't know what's going to happen. I'll try to look for something else, but it won't be easy. It was all just going along so well - until this thing happened. And that's thrown it all out of kilter. If it comes to it, I won't leave. I'll just go sick and not go back until they 'let me go' - as happened when I had my last major breakdown in 2010. But then it's back into the benefits thing, which is always a nightmare. I don't want that, if I can help it. I'll do my best to keep away from that. But then exhaustion with the work I do may catch up with me, anyway. Then there's always the possibility that my landlord will decide to sell the property. Then I'm at the mercy of social housing, and going wherever they put me.
Having said that, I much prefer to rent. When I was married, I had a decent civil service job, a car, a suit and tie, a mortgage.... and it all felt wrong! It felt like, in some ways, I'd succumbed to expectations. I felt trapped. It was a relief for me to get out of all that and get back to renting. It's always felt safer because I've never felt stable enough, in any way, to feel confident of always being able to sustain my position. If I'd had a mortgage when I had that breakdown, I'd have been stuffed, because I didn't work for over two years. Even when I felt ready to return to work again, it took months for me to find a job. I had a bit of cash from the equity of the house sale, but I spent much of that just keeping myself going without an income.
Yeah... just a little bit of financial independence. Or not even independence. Just enough to give me a bit of scope for movement - to another location, a nicer flat, etc. I'd love, of course, to be able to make money out of what I really want to do with my life - write - but I can't see that happening in the near future, if at all. I personally know of a couple of people it happened to, and they both went from being part-time employed to being millionaires - not quite overnight, but pretty quickly. They realised the dream. But there's only a very small number of them that do. I think I read a while back that the average income of published novelists in this country - from J K Rowling-in-it on down - is £11,000 a year. Less than minimum wage brings me on a 30-hour week.
And yes... I certainly know that 'go to sleep and not wake up' thing. Although I wouldn't actively do anything about it unless things really did collapse around me, the idea is always there. There's a paper here that makes for startling reading...
Suicidal ideation and suicide plans or attempts in adults with Asperger's syndrome attending a specialist diagnostic clinic: a clinical cohort study
And on that cheerful note... I think it's time to switch off and watch a film. Strangely, I always find disaster movies or documentaries reassuring at times. They make me think 'Oh well... could always be worse!'