What Is The Hardest Thing...

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i prefer the second half of my life to the first. a lot!

...the hardest thing hmmm. yeah tiredness, lack of resilience.

Hadn't this dx until few years ago (adulthood), so that in itself is more insight/understanding than I grew up with. I'm not in the same "phase" as my age peers, because I'm not following the path of reproduction. I'm out-of-step with what "normal" people do at this point in their lives, which doesn't matter-but makes it harder to find potential new friends w/shared interests.

This is what happened to me when out of school/after I left college. Takes time for my charms to become evident, for my positive qualities to shine through my personal peculiarities. I don't spend time around other people often enough for "us" to get to know each other. I hang out with the same few folks who I can trust because they accept me.

The changing expectations bother me. It was easier, in ways, to be a kid-the demands made upon me, the standards of performance were more achievable. The requirements for being an adult, and the increasingly exacting intricacies one must absorb & decode, are exhausting. I didn't enjoy being powerless (which was how I felt within my family) as a child-but I don't appreciate the assumptions that as an adult, I'm responsible for all my own problems. That I have the power but lack the will, that I'm able just not willing, etc. Which gets back to how the dx has given me new ways to think about how I think...

...and that I don't "feel" any specific "age" in my head, never have. Dislike others changing reactions to me based on their perceptions/categories, but of course it happens no matter one's age-I can't do anything about the ideas other people project onto their experience of me.

after applying to a wide variety of menial jobs. minimum wage. unskilled labor. almost everyone ignored me. the of the ones that hired me, morons keep firing my worthless corpse.

emotional resilience is getting harder with age. the older i get, the more i feel like anyone could wound me immediately, permanently, profoundly, without undue effort or intention. but for someone to assist me it would take a lot of $$, time, energy, effort, skill, and success.

for example, when i was in 6th grade, an entire stampede of junior high school reptiles physically assaulted me. now i am 34, and every day since then i have obsessed over it. actually, after it happened, i had no clue that it would take this long to get over. not only that, but a couple months afterward, felt like i could put it in the past. wrong.

likewise, i have discussed this with numerous counselors, a lot of times. what do i get, "i'm sorry it happened"? quite frankly, i feel guilty that maybe it was my fault. but it was certainly not the counselor's fault.

the other thing tough is by saying "i'm sorry it happened", that made it sound more important than it was.

driving is also pretty hard for me. i get edgy/uptight/anxious. and a lot of the times i just zone out.

bowel movements are pretty hard too. two or 3 per day. 30 to 90 minutes each one. straining.

even with 5 liter water per day.

some articles claim that autists have more excretory (bowel movement) problems than the standard population. neurotypicals.

likewise, b/c of the job situation (or lack thereof), i worry about ending up homeless.

feel kind of ashamed i ain't normal. neurotypical. it takes so much energy to interact with someone.

Having to cut out all of my family from my life.
But it is freeing.

Health issues
My peers have had such different life experiences than me, they are wrapping up their careers, are grandparents etc that it exacerbates the existing neurological communication issues.

Leaving the house is struggle... Until xmas i was going out almost every weekend to clubs or gigs, but it just got harder and harder.

Then a started having panic attacks in public. Just hard to breath, cold sweats. So i avoid it as much as i can now.
My friends and family as social creatures they party a lot. I get overwhelmed in crowds now, and certain sounds go through me like a knife blade.

While middle-aged me is much better with social skills, I'm also less tolerant of people invading my space with noise, touching, etc. and sometimes react harshly--and wonder afterward if my response was justified or not by NT standards.

AS meant I had very poor social skills when younger, which means I didn't get a career till I was in my late 30s... and a lot of debt, which means I worry about my financial future.

It's much harder to form friendships and other relationships. In middle age, people already have their preexisting social groups, and new connections tend to be used pretty openly for professional or business purposes.

I have kids, my wife is away a lot for work, and it's exhausting. The normal chaos and noise of two young boys is sometimes just too much. Added to that, one son is like me; while that means I understand him, it also means that his AS (for example, making weird sounds) isn't always compatible with my AS (for example, hypersensitivity to sound).

When I was younger, I was fortunate to be quite good-looking, which meant I got lots of passing smiles and flirting from the ladies. (Which saved me, since I was inept at making a first move!) I didn't realize how nice that was till it went away (though that might be for the best, since I'm married now).

Positive thing: I care a lot less what anyone else thinks. I am who I am, weird or not. Deal with it.