Getting old and not getting to live.

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I'm not that old in the grand scheme of things, I'm 27 but I just realised that's nearly 30.
30 is an age when I should have bought a home, gotten a good career, have a husband and be considering kids.

Instead I'm unemployed - have been for three years, I can't even get a voluntary job because I can't get references, because of problems with AS it means finding work is even harder as there are fewer jobs I can go for, I struggle with the phone when employers call me, and even if I get to an interview they know there's something 'wrong' with me. If I do get back into work it'll be a bad job, and I'll not have a career.

Due to unemployment I'm probably never going to even rent privately let alone buy, in fact due to lack of council houses it looks unlikely I'll get any sort of house any time soon because I'm not high enough on the list for the council to ever give me a flat let alone a house, which in turn means no living with my partner and no starting a family. We'll never be able to afford to get married. We've never been on holiday in our lives, barely been out of the city where we live, there's a massive wide world that we'll never get to see. My partner couldn't afford to go to college and I couldn't afford to go to university, we know if we have kids between our situation and the government raising fees or getting rid of ESA that our kids may not get to go into higher education either. I've been gaining weight and can see myself getting older so fast, I feel twice my age due to stress and poor quality of life...my future looks so depressing.

On TV every day I see more to put me down. Benefits being cut. People implying unemployed are lazy or worthless. Younger people given guaranteed jobs and training despite the fact they have more options open to them and often don't have as much of a need for work as those of us who are a little older. How the privileged who get to go to university aren't getting their dream job straight after graduation, yet knowing they're going to be taking the jobs we need in the mean time. Then there is the job centre who force me off one benefit as I'm too disabled, but I'm refused disability benefits as I'm not disabled enough, asperger's/autism is invisible in the UK benefits/employment system. I have a disability adviser who knows nothing about my disability and does nothing to help me, staff who lie about the prejudice they've shown me, I get sent to classes to teach me 2+2 because they don't believe I'm not an idiot, I get pulled off college courses because of some scheme that forces me to sit doing nothing for 13 weeks or forced to work for free, the fact after 4 months I'm still waiting for them to sort out my benefits. Basically EVERYTHING seems to be against me finding work, there's no support, yet the younger people and those who are more privileged seem to get everything handed to them. I don't understand why.

It's not the being unemployed, the fact we are suffering or that no one seems to care that people like us are suffering, it's the fact that being unemployed is screwing with our future. People attack students for protesting about student fees, yet no one seems to realise it's not the students it effects but our children and their futures too, it's putting down working classes...everyone here in the UK should be protesting what the government is doing to vulnerable and working-class people. Getting people into work benefits everyone but the system is designed to keep people out of work, no one in the job centre or DWP seems capable of anything - solve unemployment in one easy step - give those of us who are unemployed the jobs of the job centre and DWP staff because we could sure as hell do a better job! With the economy being as it is I don't understand why people can still blame the unemployed for being out of work. I don't understand why there isn't more of a community amongst disabled people, we are the most screwed-over people in society, the benefits system is a joke, you have to literally be physically and mentally disabled to the point of drooling in a corner to be given disability benefits...so I don't understand why all disabled people don't support each other and fight for our rights. AHHHHH!! !

Beyond the general annoyance of my situation it all boils down to this;
I spent my teens and early twenties struggling with AS, but also struggling to support a bipolar partner and seriously depressed 'foster' daughter/flatmate who were both unable to work, then when my partner and I split I was left homeless for three years. It seems as though between being homeless and being unemployed for so long now that this has been my twenties - I should have been enjoying my twenties, I haven't had a chance to. Don't get me started on how guilty I feel now my partner is missing out on his twenties too due to my unemployment.

I hate seeing people in their early twenties and realising I'm getting old, seeing that famous people are still in their twenties yet have achieved so much, and knowing that basically once you're out of your twenties it seems you're no longer of any relevance. I KNOW that it could be worse and I'm just being whiny...which in itself is yet another problem to make me feel like sh**...but I just feel so depressed about everything right now, it's so hard to carry on when it all seems so pointless, what was supposed to be the best part of my life has been wasted and the rest of my life will be spent in poverty, struggling, stuck in a rut...I'll be like the tired people I see around me in poor areas where I've lived, there's just no life left in them.

I had such a great future, I was so smart and could have been anything, I had so much potential, so much life, talent, a wonderful little light inside me that could have seen me achieve such great things, been so great...now that little light is a big deep dark hole in my centre that I'm free falling into without any way of holding on and dragging myself back up. I want to snap out of this, drag myself back up, come to terms with getting older and do something positive with my life, but there seems to be no way and I don't know how to change that. I was ALWAYS cheery, never depressed, always happy, now I'm never anything but depressed, miserable, dead in comparison to how I was and how I should be right now. I feel so old, I look around and see what I will become, an old poor woman with little value in society.

In the past what'd gotten me through hard times has been hope, but with the future looking so dim it's hard to keep-up hope.
Unfortunately there is still enough hope to stop me from ending it all right now, I still want to live but this that I've got now isn't a life!

I had such a great future, I was so smart and could have been anything, I had so much potential, so much life, talent, a wonderful little light inside me that could have seen me achieve such great things, been so great...now that little light is a big deep dark hole in my centre

I'm not that old in the grand scheme of things, I'm 27 but I just realised that's nearly 30.
30 is an age when I should have bought a home, gotten a good career, have a husband and be considering kids.

I didn't have any of that stuff at 27, but I have it all now at 34. We Aspies just run a little behind the curve is all. Don't set deadlines for yourself, it only keeps you focused on the negatives.

Is that Henry Miller in your avatar midlifeaspie?

ee cummings