What Is The Hardest Thing...

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Haha. Thats pretty common to people of all walks of life it seems. Its not fair, but they dont really trust people over 30 either!

It's harder taking care of my health. My cholesterol keeps climbing, and I just don't feel the need to take the corrective steps. I love crisps, and deep fried foods, and all the bad stuff. Same for exercising regularly. I get out for a walk, but I should be doing it every bloody day.

I find that I am far more comfortable being just me. I don't care as much about what other people think of me or if I am making them happy or not. I have also stopped buying into the idea that you have to have a large social circle to stay mentally healthy. (That is one of the recommendations, maintain social ties.) I stopped talking to all of the people in my life that were causing stress and I find that I am SO much happier.

That's what I find. I've decided that I was going to be myself and live my own life, in mid February. I'm now the happiest that I've ever been. There's only one person on this planet that I need to make happy, and that's me.

i agree, and it's only in getting older that i get that.

other i think getting older is difficult, something is changing or will be and i'm not sure what, i'm going to look differently, to be treated differently and it scares me.
not often yet, cause i'm mainly with 30 year old friends having young kids and i don't look as if i was all that much older, but i know it's coming, and really don't know what to do with it.
maybe being older is less frightening than getting older, it's the whole proces that scares me.

That reminds me. When I took a psych class, I found out that researchers had discovered that having friends was a significant factor in living longer. As positive an impact on lifespan as smoking is a negative impact, if you can believe the researchers. This was 10 years ago before I'd heard of AS. But I was crushed because I didn't have friends then and knew I never would and felt like I was destined to die an early, lonely death.

That, plus society's pressure to have lots of friends and have an active lifestyle etc., have combined to make me feel as if I should live that way.

Like you, over the last few months I've come to accept who I am, that I will never have a social circle, to appreciate my one best friend, and now that I've given up the desire to be different than who I really am, I am a lot more peaceful. And I've also set clear boundaries with necessary family members.

I turned gray rather early, and when the bag boy at the grocery would say "hay mister", I'd turn 'round to see who was standing behind me(?)

I don't feel old, most of the time. But I do look old. ~sigh~

I want to give you feedback: I've been reading your posts since I joined two years ago, and I've noticed a striking difference in your recent posts compared to your older ones. You definitely seem not only more mature, but more importantly, much more at peace and even joyful.
Peace

[quote="Prof_Pretorius"][quote="lemon"] i know it's coming, and really don't know what to do with it.
maybe being older is less frightening than getting older, it's the whole proces that scares me.[/quote]
I turned gray rather early, and when the bag boy at the grocery would say "hay mister", I'd turn 'round to see who was standing behind me(?)
[/quote]

that's exactly what's happening: people start to call me madam when they always said miss, not that i want to be called miss, but it means something changed, i now look like a 'madam' i guess, and i don't know what a madam is like.

like you say when you grow older there is nothing from the inside that changes, so i don't know how to deal with it
(i'm even more sportive now than i was at seventeen and healthier cause i don't smoke no more, so it's not that)

I probably use the word friend very loosely. I doubt if I've had that many really close friends. People I get to know through work or something along those lines, that don't freak me out too much anymore, get called freinds. Maybe they are, I guess they are, but close friends, not all that many. Even then they seem to be flighty, it's not a grand plan to do it that way. It's like we pass in the night, hang out, obsess with each other and move on. And it's good, becasue without having said it, I know they understand, it's still good and they do too.

Smoking, yeah guilty (which is actaully a lie, I don't like to, but I do so I enjoy it),but your post reminded me of something. Please bare with me for a short story. So I'm in the shrinks and I'm going througn a very serious suicide phase (med induced), we figure out a plan, and then somehow get onto my Hep C and the list goes on with lot's of "his serious" stuff issues, what he thinks is bad for me, remember, he won't listen to anything other then BP. I think they call that a closed mind. He ends the whole thing saying, "you know, you really should stop smoking". I looked at him and just burst out laughing and told him thanks, I really needed that laugh. He was puzzled. I said, look at what we just discussed and I'm to worry about smoking? I might stop smoking and I might not, with the price of the things, I think the free market will be the decider.

Please don't completely lose that faith in humanity. It shows that you have a good heart. It is so rare in this world. My husband calls it the "Planet of Goodness and Light" and says that is where I live. Every now and then a bad guy (the reality of the rest of the world) comes down and kicks me in the ass and it is quite painful. I shed a few tears and swear that I will never let it happen again. But I know that my faith in humanity and kind heart are my best qualities and they have gotten me through some crappy times. It gets easier as you get older and don't care as much what people think about you.
I also have issues with being controlling and taking it personally when someone doesn't like what I like. I think it has a lot to do with wanting to be validated. If they like what I like, they must like me. My NT son is like this, also. It must come with the whole naive, kind heart package.

blessedmom

"I think it has a lot to do with wanting to be validated."


Great sentance, I think I'm trying to do that here, as well. That is worthy of some soul searching.

I felt a fear of getting older, too. When I was forty, I went through this frantic phase of trying to stay young. Then I realized that I was blessed with a young face, and that aging, when it happened would be slow, as far as appearance, anyway. My health is poor, unfortunately, so in the physical aspect of aging, I've been getting a taste of what I fear already. You are blessed to have good health. And a young attitude goes a long way, too. I think that we all age in our own way.

The hardest thing has been losing hope of having the life I dreamed of when I was younger.

It has been a true loss that I have had to spend some time grieving over. When I was a teenager, with a bright future ahead of me (this was 25 years ago), I expected to have a successful life: marriage, grad school education, kids, great career, plenty of money, grand vacations, great house, etc.

HAH! as Mozart would say.

It's too depressing to say how far from that I am.

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.