Approaching 60...

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.