It’s hard to not be defined by your bad past choices. They shape who you are in the present.
Whereas everyone else in my family earned qualifications, built careers, formed relationships, created families…
I dropped out, isolated myself, ruined my mind and my body, and alienated myself from humanity. I’m a 36-year-old with less social experience than the average 15-year-old. On top of which I’ve built a whole host of negative traits in the time I should’ve been doing normal life stuff.
I don’t have the experience of functioning in a relationship. I don’t know what that’s like. I don’t know what it’s like to have close friendships. I don’t know what it’s like to not feel isolated and alienated from everyone around me. I don’t know what it’s like to not feel scared every time I leave the house. I don’t know what it’s like to not be filled with hatred and envy and regret and despair.
This is who I am right now. It’s pretty wretched, pathetic, and highly unappealing to others. The best reaction I can hope for is pity.
And with this wretched me that I am right now, I have to build a life that is somehow less miserable. And it doesn’t feel possible. And I struggle to live with that.
6 comments
I know what it feels like, being the screw up. There’s always someone you can compare yourself to. A fair few of my friends growing up ended up pretty high up in IT. Not everyone though. One of my cousins is lost, maybe dead, it’ll be a long time until we know, if ever.. Another cousin, ended up marrying a pedophile, tore her life up for awhile, but you know what? she rebuilt, remarried, achieved pretty well. One of my friends is a security guard, another works at a convenience store. Plenty of good smart people end up making do.
and the past, it’s fixed, there’s no amount of hand wringing that can change it. I know you know that, I’m repeating it for myself as well. Went through my whole history of screw ups and losses with my therapist on Tuesday. It’s bigger than I remember, I tried to keep rolling, keep going as if I hadn’t carved huge scars out of myself. It’s a young person’s game, pretending to be invincible.
So I’ve assigned myself the job of caregiving my own sick life. There’s no better caregiver out there, I can promise you that. It’s hard, learning to be kind to self, I’m still learning. Truth be told I was a pretty abusive caregiver to myself in the past…. thought it wasn’t abuse if I did it to me, thought it was pushing myself. I didn’t do myself any favors thinking that way.
Maturity is accepting limitations, and it’s a hard thing, but also remember you are more than your limitations, than your failures. Other screw ups manage to pull it together. I think about all the hard core addicts I worked with, a few had pasts I wouldn’t want to imagine carrying that weight, but I saw them pick themselves back up, make something out of that big pile of mess. If they can….. maybe I can? maybe you can? I hope so.
I suppose to a certain extent being “the screw-up” is relative. I used to compare myself to those of my peers who achieved outstanding things and feel bad. Now I compare myself to the average and feel bad. I’m pretty much the lowest of the low, especially when it comes to relationships and social experience. One guy from my year group died young in a drunk-driving crash, but I can’t really fault him for that – at least he was was out living and enjoying his youth, instead of hiding away like me. Other than that it’s hard to imagine anyone who’s done worse than me. Even someone with the misfortune to be currently unemployed or homeless is likely to have built up more useful social skills and life experience than I have.
The problem is not my position (basic as it is), but who I am as a person. I have relatively cushy work, am able to afford to rent an ok place on my own, just about pay my bills. There’s nothing that would stop someone with the right mind from making the best of my situation. But I don’t have that mind. I have the mind of an isolated neurotic fuckup with little to no life experience.
I disagree, in my case literally anyone would make a better caregiver. But obviously no-one would be stupid enough to apply for the role. So it falls to me. And I have no idea how to handle the kind of negative feelings my mind generates. I feel so sad, about who I used to be, and who I am now. I used to be an actual person, as a child, you know? I used to have hope, and positivity, and personality. I actually enjoyed living. And now I’m just this miserable lonely disgusting asshole. I avoided all the crucial stages in character development. And I don’t know how to handle that.
It’s true that we’re more than our failures. In all my years of isolating myself from the world, I actually have learnt a lot about it. I see things with a perspective and distance I didn’t before. But it definitely wasn’t worth it, and it’s cold comfort when the negative feelings start to close in.
“I suppose to a certain extent being “the screw-up” is relative. I used to compare myself to those of my peers who achieved outstanding things and feel bad. Now I compare myself to the average and feel bad.”
->OMG, SAME!! :'(
🙁
Yup, regretting having thrown my youth away, still haunts me. I had friends who did all of those cool things, had relationships, had s3x and the closest I’ve been with all these, is to watch some teenage drama on TV.
I don’t know, why some of us never get the human contact we’ve always wished for. The worst is now, even without IRL friends, but only on screen (if you have any), you are still reminded in real-time, by what they are doing with their lives right now. Taking vacations, having children, earning good money, buying something cool.. it feels awful.
I think I know exactly what you’re describing and it’s like: Where did my time go? Can I go back in time? If not, will I be able to still make something out of it?
I wish I had an answer for you. I’m still looking for mine.
I’m just glad I got to read this on this particular day, ’cause frankly it’s been a cr@p day. (Especially reading a post from a user, that’s been here a long time)
“Where did my time go? Can I go back in time?” Very much this. Realising how long it’s been, how old I am, desperately wanting to go back.
“will I be able to still make something out of it?” The older I get, the clearer it becomes how limited the future I’ve created for myself is. I have to face that most of my desires aren’t attainable anymore, if they ever were. That my chances of even scraping the minimal amount of contentment are highly unlikely, and in most cases the best I can do is try to find some way to accept the loss.
But you are not me, and your answers are not mine. There may still be hope for you.