i have lived 42 years. there isnt much i havent done. Â i had beauty and intelligence and much success as measured even by societal standards. i have my masters, made Vice Pres before i was 35, achieved a 6-figured income before i was 30, was married to an attorney with 3 children, had a 5500 sq ft home on the water, i have traveled nationally and internationally, i by all standards have seen and done it all…
i have never experienced happiness or joy– ever.
i used to think my childrens births were joy or happiness now I see that I was excited bc I thought I’d have someone to love and to love me.
I am 42. I no longer have beauty nor intelligence. My education in life does not matter. I am no longer married or have my children. There is no big house on the water anymore.
I still have never felt happiness.
I have no job and haven’t worked professionally in 8 years. I have no money. The $8 hour job that took me 2 years to find ended less than a month after it started because my 13 year old car was repossessed – it is now so horrific to face life because simply put there is no lower I can go emotionally- a lifetime of depression led me to this dirty couch in a one room apartment that is 3 months behind in rent — there is nothing above me to reach up for because it is sooo far down at this point.
A lifetime of not ever being happy once led me here to finally realizing all my past attempts at living or dying all led to this same low point — if I had succeeded at suicide one of the many times in my past I wouldn’t be here today living in an even more miserable place than I ever knew possible before.
Do you know how it feels to realize that you truly would have been better off dead?
I’ve been suicidal or depressed since I was a child…my life has not one monumental or inconspicuous moment in it of happiness.
I looked at my phone today bc I do not have one friend to call at all bc I have not one friend.
My beloved dog died in February.
I am alone
I could have avoided the pain and misery of the myriad of life experiences I have had that only got worse and more hurtful as the years passed. Each one consecutively worse or more detrimental than before. I have reduced to nothing and feel nothing towards others that is remotely human.
I failed in the past at both life and death.
Now that I have waited a lifetime for things to change and they have not changed- they have only gotten worse than I ever thought was humanly possible, I am done waiting.
6 comments
I cannot say anything that will ease your distress, I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to try, all I will say is that I understand as I identify with you as I have also done may things and have never been happy even though I’ve done many interesting things in life. All I can offer is that you are not alone in how you feel, I am with you, I am there too….
I don’t have any words for you. Except whatever is conveyed via the internet. I truly wish you peace.
Sorry that you’re hurting. I’ve seen it suggested that happiness is a choice that comes from inside of us. Cases like yours almost seem to support that happiness cannot possibly be generated externally, because no matter how high or low you go on the measuring stick of society’s levels of “success”, you can still be unhappy. I know the idea that happiness is a choice might seem incredibly insulting, as if you could have been happy all these years but you simply chose not to. But it’s not that simple. It might be because in the depressed state, our brains don’t actually know how to make that choice. So it’s not as simple as saying “gee if you had just woken up each morning and decided that you were gonna be happy, you would have been fine”. Calling it a choice can be misleading, it would be like saying you could choose to cure cancer if you really felt like it. There’s more to it than just the choice, and if you lack the tools and understanding to make that choice, it is still hard. But again, the fact that you’ve been through all levels of success in your life and your mood never changed does seem to prove that it doesn’t come from the outside, so it must be somewhere within. There are likely people in third world countries who wake up and struggle for food everyday who still might not find themselves entirely suicidal or depressed about life. You lament the fact that you no longer have your family together, but some people die without ever having married or knowing what it’s like to create children with a partner at all, and they might still manage to be happy. Your small apartment with only a couch might seem like the greatest blessing in the world to someone who has no home or no shelter. It’s a matter of perspective.
You’re here, you’re alive, you have access to the internet, you’re not in a war torn country (I’m assuming), you’ve reached levels of success in your life that most will probably never know.
Sorry I know the “cheer up, it could be worse” type of responses are never really all that helpful. But I simply think you’re running out of time to try to learn that happiness comes from within. You can find happiness in something as simple as a breeze or the sunlight shining on your face. It doesn’t have to be a big house on the water front.
I understand what it’s like to be lonely. My life sounds similar to yours. Small apartment. No friends. And whereas you lived a life, you had a family at one point and at least had all of that for a while, I’m only in my mid twenties. Already for some reason I find myself without friends and without a social life during what most would say should be the most exciting years of my life. No job either. I sit here alone most days.
I’m sorry your dog died, animals offer great companionship, when you feel ready, you should definitely get a new pet. It’s just an unfortunate part of pet ownership, you have to accept that you are going to see them die one day. It’s just part of the journey. You either avoid having a pet all together just so you can avoid the pain of losing them, or you accept that they will pass one day, but if you gave them a good life there should be nothing to mourn.
As much as I still consider myself depressed, it has been over two years that I have been doing this routine, living alone in a first floor apartment with no friends, slowly I have been able to find that there are still things to smile about and I can still choose to have a good day if I want to. If I make zero effort and choose to lay in bed and think of all the people who no longer care to be my friend and nobody out of the hundreds of people I’ve known in the past ever think to call me and see if I’m still alive, it can be depressing and I will have a bad day. If I choose to exercise and get some fresh air and clean house and whatever else, I can manage to find myself in a good mood.
I hope you’re able to figure something out. I think the work has to be done within. You already know that no amount of external success ever changed how you felt, so it would be pointless to say that you need to chase after a relationship or a certain career or a certain level of success, that never worked for you. You need to figure out how to be happy where you are instead of having the mentality that you can only be happy if something changes. We can’t control situations, we can only control our reaction to them. I’m not a fan of it myself, but I’ll throw out the suggestion anyway, maybe you need to try talking to someone or a medication if this has really been pervasive throughout your entire life. There is situational depression where we are sad for a reason and then there is clinical depression where no matter how good things get, we’re always depressed anyway. Maybe someone could help you work through it.
Anyways best of luck I hope you can find something to be happy about. Try to start appreciating the small things. It helps sometimes.
That’s very compelling and I can echo so much of it. If I had known what the last 10 years would be it would have been check out time for sure, but we don’t, is that good or not? Like you I lost career (small business), friends, family members and a pet, have legal/financial obligations and almost no income. The only saying is you can adjust to anything but what if as soon as you do it just gets even worse? Running out of time and hope as well.
I know what it’s like to not feel any kind of fulfillment from anything. I’m younger than you and haven’t had the sort of monumental experiences that you described, but the thing is I don’t want to have them. You say you don’t have intelligence anymore, and I’m not sure what you mean by that, but I can tell from your writing that you’re pretty intelligent, and unfortunately that’s probably part of your problem. You think outside the box and see this life for what it really is. Pointless and tragic.
Next time you feel like you don’t have any friends and are all alone, message me if you like and we can chat. Here’s my email – norcomgriffin@aol.com
Your story reminds me of one thing: There is a point in everyone’s life when no return is possible. Sooner or later it does happen. We only postpone that moment. Or nature does it. It seems that some of us, no matter what, are meant to be unhappy. It s really difficult to forget your past, especially when it was something as ‘successful’ as yours. In the end material things do not matter. One can feel miserable even if they had the entire world. In the end nothing matters. It doesn t matter if you ve been miserable or happy in the past. Time will not act anymore. And there is no substitute for Time. I don t know if this brings any kind of consolation to your mind but I am in the same boat as you are. Unfortunately yesterday cannot be changed, and even if it could be changed, probably we would have done the same mistakes. Are our lives written in advance? Are our future actions written in our DNA s? Probably we aren t gonna find the answer to that question very soon, especially now when the boat, for some of us, is sinking fast.
I think that no matter what we do in our life we(or our brains) are ‘programmed’ to reach the same point. The
point where there is no return…
My story is similar to yours, except the wealth part. Haven t had that, yet I don t regret it.