Is it true things get easier as you get older?

Post Reply New Topic

I am going to be 27 in less than a week and no, things are not easier for me. I never had support growing up, so I find things harder than when I was younger. Other people have different experiences though.

Things have gotten easier for me over the past two years. I magically didn't have to prove any toughness or intelligence to anybody past Mid September in 2009. Things would have gotten easier a lot sooner, if I would have just listened to my mum tell the truth and accepted my truth a lot sooner. The truth that my profile and signature illuminates.

Well right now I just finished the last semester of university. Although I am a different person to who I was when I first started, things don't feel to be getting much easier, or better, for that matter. I didn't change as much as I hoped I would, and I found I have much more significant difficulties in some areas than I previosuly anticipated, and college only had highlighted them. However I have become much more aware of who I am and my strengths and weaknesses. I have learnt what some of my limits are and to stop trying to fight AS and stop trying to meet society's expectations.

I can manage alright outside my comfort zone, but I realise that I'm a fish trying to adapt outside of water because that is what is expected of me. I may be able to survive outside of the water, but I certainly don't thrive outside of it. But the pond is drying up, so there's little choice for the fish but to leave the pond. But outside their pond habitat, they are vulnerable, and there are predators about that want to eat them.

Well, I'm only 24, but things are definitely getting worse.

I'd say things 'got different,' rather than 'got easier.'

Overall, things are a bit better, though. Like others have said, having an adult level of freedom to leave crappy situations is good. And for a combination of reasons I don't get people hassling me as much.

OTOH, I'm expected to know a lot of "normal adult" things that I don't know (i.e. complicated tax rules). And, also I'm supposed to have a normal adult life (meaning spouse, kids, career, mortgage, etc.) like my (so-called) peers, but since I don't have that there's even less to (small) talk about than when I was younger.

For me, 25-30 was a nightmare, though. I don't think one can generalize very much about "life after 25" -- it will depend on your individual circumstances too much.

It depends what you mean.

In terms of skills, most skills have gotten much harder for me as I've gotten older, including many autism-related difficulties which have gotten simply more difficult instead of easier. A few things did get easier but most got harder, and the things that did get easier are not the sort of things that most people would consider really important skills. (I beg to differ, but still, they're not the most practical skills for what most people would consider important practical life skills or anything. They're more about intuition, ethics, etc.)

But in terms of happiness (or... something I don't know the word for, lack of constantly being wigged out about everything?), absolutely things got better at exactly that age range. I'm 30 now and I am happier with my life than I ever have been, even though it's only getting more difficult in other areas. Some of the things that catalyzed these changes were truly horrible, nightmarish events that I had to either deal with or die, and somehow I learned to deal with a lot more than most people do, and in the process became a lot less unhappy with my life.

Not that happiness has to be the end-all and be-all. I would consider being an ethical person to be more important than being a happy person, but I think I've improved in that area as well... not that anyone is ever done improving in that area.