How do you deal with how unfair life can be?

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I'm going to start this post with a 'woe is me' list - there's reason for this first, but feel free to skip this part.

I'm fine with AS but it comes with problems such as bullying and difficulty with relationships with family and peers.
I'm a survivor of emotional, sexual and physical abuse via my parents, babysitter and an ex boyfriend in my teens.
I'm a survivor of minor strokes, it cost me my education, and even if affordable I was unable to go into university.
My father was an alcoholic, so when my parents divorced he didn't support us financially so I grew-up in poverty.
I was left homeless for 2-3 years and on the verge of break-down when my ex cheated with our 'foster daughter'.
I'm long-term unemployed; bad debt, poor credit, no social life, poor health, loss of friendships, and regression.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, plus one problem compounds others or brings a whole new set of problems.
I have it better than some, but that's not the point...

These things are not self-imposed, they're facts of life that can't be magicked away with positive thinking, and working hard can only do so much to repair the damage or work with what I was dealt to improve my life - I can also say looking back I didn't make too many regrettable choices, I can't see how things could have turned out much different. I usually don't go round publicising my woes - sometimes I want to so people might understand why I'm where I am in my life, that it's not all my fault, and I'm strong - but I doubt people would believe half these things, and certainly wouldn't fully understand.

The problem I have now is when I look through Facebook pages of friends from my childhood or teens - these people didn't work hard, they didn't have to fight, yet they seem to have everything...lives in exotic countries or at least somewhere better than here, good homes, good husbands, good jobs, social life, children, upwards mobility, and time/money to look good. They are people I'd look at and think they look like adults, middle-class adults to be specific - I'm not quite sure what makes them different to me, but there's something.

What's more is that these people got to go to university to enjoy student life, or had the money in their twenties to spend on partying - I didn't. I'm finding it VERY hard to face my thirties because I feel I missed-out on my twenties, it hurts now seeing my old friends who have had their fun in their twenties and now settling down into nice cosy family lives. I'm not ready to settle down because I've not had my fun, besides I can't even afford to move in with my boyfriend let alone get married and start a family, I feel hugely pressured to settle down soon due to my age but at the same time my current situation prevents that, it feels like I'm in a mad rush to catch-up and I just can't.

It'd be okay if I was seeing these people and their lives but was still happy with my own life - fact is their lives may not suit me, that's fine - the thing is that I am not happy with my life, when you're unemployed especially you lose your identity and it effects you so much and in so many ways. I fail to see how I could feel happy with my life or self-confident, let alone remain happy when comparing myself to them.

I'm finding it REALLY hard not to get upset at how unfair life can be, why did I have to be the one left behind, the failure, the one who misses out on what all my childhood friends got so easily? How do you avoid feeling useless and worthless compared to others who've achieved more than you? This is my only life and I've missed out on so much, how do I not feel so helpless and numb at that thought?

Hi bloodheart

I think your question is a very deep one indeed.

Positive thinking is often used to delude oneself and not deal with the depth of a persons suffering.

I have my long list of woes too.

Was abandoned by my mother as a baby.

My adopted parents were alcoholic and abusive.

Admitted to psychiatric hospital at age 15 and remained there for over a year suffering severe depression.

Never took an exam in my life

Never went to university.

Was sexually abused for 3 years by my psychiatrist who then committed suicide after I spoke out about it. Consequently suffered complex PTSD from suppressed guilt)

Lived most of my young adult life terrified of my split-off feelings, and my of my behaviours governed by unconscious drives in order to avoid the pain of my past.

Met my biological father at age 22 to find that he was autistic

18 years later and after years of pretending to be normal as if my life depended on it (which it did as a child as I was beaten and humailated by my adopted parents for my unusual expressions) I was dx AS

Before my dx I did not want to live anymore. The weight of my sorrow was now too great to bear. My face did not convey the horrors of my past. In a desperate attempt to externalize the internal despair I cut my arms.

No job

No qualifications

No tool kit for opening up my soul

I ached for death.


And then, slowly I felt the enormity of my pain and loss in life. My tears reunited me with deeper self. Slowly my resentment towards those that hurt me lifted and then flowered into forgiveness. Ultimately I forgave myself and started to love myself by tending tenderly to those parts of myself that were cast into the shadowlands of my being.

I cried and cried and cried for many years.

I only have my answer to your question, I hope you find yours.

Sorry to read all about what you have been through, Bloodheart. you are a true survivor to have come out on the other side of all those things. And same to the above poster... quaker.

RE Facebook that is kind of a reason I dont go on it much. I dont have a high friend count and suspect I dont come up in peoples news feeds much.

I observe the lives of people my age, some married with kids, some travelling. I used to be more envious of them but I have realised recently that peoples lives arent as perfect as they make out on FB.

It is a silly website in a way, because it is a place where you advertise the best of your life without putting anything in about the trials and problems. So you can get a very biased view of people's lives.

Though of course it is obvious that many of them have lucked out and gotten a good deal out of life.. that is true.

I am not sure how to deal with this, what I read helps is to avoid reading things that make you feel envious or bad, ie if there is a story that is making you feel envious, hide it from the newsfeed! If there is a person consistently writing things about their fabulous life then hide them from the newsfeed altogether!

It would be nice to think that we could read stuff like that and be happy and think "oh that is nice, such and such is doing well." But the human mind doesnt really work like that. It is very difficult to feel happy for someone if ones own happiness is something that is difficult to attain. Perhaps the best thing to do under these circumstances is to just focus on your own happiness and try and find things that can enhance your life and take a break from comparing your own to other's lives. I dont know.

Im finding G+ good so far because people seem to actually be more honest on it, people have smaller friends lists on there as it is just getting started, so people are being a bit more forthcoming with what they think....

Well, I'm Christian. That helps me exponentially. Otherwise it'd be hard to motivate myself. Call me whatever, but if I wasn't Christian, I'd probably be a huge douchebag and that's how I'd cope. That's how I did cope. Now, I know if I do what God wants me to do, it's OK, even if people don't like me for it, as it's not about other people's opinions, it's about God's.

Besides that, I play around. I occupy myself with my interests, right now one of my favorite ones is ice skating. So I go ice skating. Ice skating is fun enough to make you forget about what's going on. And it's something I'm good at it, that others are not. So thank God for ice skating. Guess I work out, too. But ice skating, woohoo.

Oh, I try I guess to listen to positive music, too. Lots of dance music and stuff. Don't like media that's too "dark" anymore, that was a shift after becoming Christian.

But Christianity very much helped me, in so many ways. I look back and don't like who I was before I was Christian, very much don't like that person, so yeah. I still have problems and stuff, but yeah, Christ has helped me quite a lot, and I'm a lot different of a person than I was. I used to be a lot weaker.