As I get older, things get even worse

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I'm not feeling depressed or looking for emotional support, but I see people so often saying "Don't give up, trust me it gets better."

Well it has not gotten better, it's gotten far worse. I used to have a few friends, a job, a family, a life, but now I rarely leave the house or speak to anyone. My world is becoming more limited with every passing year.

what happened to the job and family?

I have to say, I feel similar, and I feel your pain. My life is closing down more too due to my decreasing ability to cope with the BS as the years go on.

While some things have become better for me, other things have gotten worse as life has gone on.

Things that got better for me with age:
Increased confidence in social interactions. They still can exhaust me, but when I think how I started out with selective mutism as a child, moved on to very shy interactions still crippled by my challenges regarding interacting with other people, and wound up today being able to deal "normally" with people; I just need a lot of energy to do so.

Things that got worse:
My rigidity and need for routine. I always had this but when I was younger I was more willing to push my own boundaries and try new ways or new things. As I get older, that gets harder to do and gives me more unhappy results. I get more set in my ways and take disruptions harder now than I did before, even though they always caused me stress. It's like, more stress now.

Sensory issues. Again, always had them my whole life. But my tolerance or (again) ability to push at the boundaries and "put up and shut up" seems to be more fragile the longer I live.

I do want to say, though, to any younger person reading what I just posted, please don't feel discouraged because you think this is your future too. It's not.

Each person is different, and has different life circumstances and support systems which will have a huge effect on how you are coping with life and with your own traits and symptoms. Because your circumstances will inevitably be different to mine or the OP's, it follows that your own aging process may not necessarily be the same as mine. Because the same things that have happened in my life as I've grown older will not be the same things that happen to you, or the same set of people.

We are each molded by who is in our lives, where we are, whether we are receiving support and love or not, and to what degree. All these factors will form a different future, and some younger ones may find their life improves for them as they reach my age. My story is only my story, so it helps to remember that I've had quite a bit of crap in my life and I'm not surprised things feel tougher for me now; your older years may go a completely different way.

I just think it's important to put that out there for the younger ones who are children or teens or 20's right now.

Same here, Molly.

I have had similar feelings. To my mind it is structure. The older we get the more we need to provide our own structure. The sturcture that used to exist around us is shrinking away as one ages it seems to me.

My trick is living in smaller scale, as I like to call it. Try to plan only five minutes ahead and do that seriously. Live more immediately, spontaneously, within the necessary routines, I mean.