So you've lived most of your life. How do you feel about it?

Post Reply New Topic

I totally relate, this has been me.

I know I could have been saved in my teens, if only a teacher or a social worker ever pulled me a side and told me what I am and how to deal with it.

My understanding is that life slows down in the old age, so even though you might live long, there won't be nearly as much going on.
I know my life had slowed to a crawl in recent years, pretty much right after college. At this rate I've definitely hit the middle of it.

Sorry folks I didn't return to this thread for a while. I have read each and every post here, and I appreciate the bittersweet honesty of self-evaluation in these posts. This is probably the most sincere and heartfelt thread I've ever read on WP.

I hope it carries on well past my time.

I'm in my 50s. Looking back, my life was better up to the age of 35 or so. People were nicer and I was seen as a charming eccentric.

After that age though, I have been seen as 'that weirdo'. No idea if it's the area I live in, or that people have got more intolerant, or I've got more annoying. I've been feeling isolated and lonely for about 20 years, an invisible, pointless person who doesn't add anything to the world.

If I could go back in time though, I'd DEFINITELY do everything differently. I'd decide what career I wanted as young as possible and train for it. Then I'd get a good job, earn lots of money and live the life I wanted. I would focus on ME for a change. I wouldn't bother getting married or having children, because that just ended up with me being the servant and supporting everyone else while having no support or social life myself. It's been lonely and hard and I've only just got through it. Fed up with that now.

^^

There was a video Mark Blyth made back in late 2016, before Trump was elected called 'Global Trumpism'.

I think he nailed one of the big factors why people are getting nastier - economically they're just about getting their blood squeezed out and they're going from living paycheck to paycheck to even deeper economic insecurity and it's driving them mad. The current system has a chokehold on their freedoms and I think people tend to envy anyone who has any kind of freedom right now that they don't personally possess (ie. they'd be fired from their job if they didn't march in perfect conformist lockstep, you're somehow free to be different and so they envy and hate it). There's probably the good old 'allist' / super NT intolerance as well but I think that's only part of the story.

Time flies when one gets older, actually. That's been my experience.

I'm 62, and it's already February----January went by so fast!

Started off well enough, happy in first primary school, lots of friends, then we moved and things didn't go well at my new school so my parents moved me to a different school. Still not great but did ok academically. Got into the local grammar school in one of the top classes. Did ok but wasn't happy with few friends. Think I was a bit depressed even back then.

At 16 went to technical college and studied electronics which I'd always been interested in. Was happier but again had few friends.

Managed to scrape through the course and get my BTEC diploma. Then got a job repairing mobile phones and moved to Berkshire. 18 months there where I ended up on night shift which I didn't like so changed jobs to an avionics engineer for Rockwell Collins in Reading. Then left my job after 6 months due to stress and depression in 1992.

Been in and out of work ever since and never got back into electronics apart from as a hobby. On and off anti depressants and now diagnosed schizophrenic and a heavy drinker aged 51.

I sometimes feel like my life hasn't even started yet.

That is very true and insightful.

It's interesting how people think I'm free, too. I'm not. Now I've got my own job I've got a little money but when our daughter was tiny, we had no spare money, we were struggling along month by month. We have one car which my husband took to work, we live in a village in the middle of nowhere, so I had no way of traveling anywhere and couldn't afford to take her to baby or toddler groups, which cost a lot. We did a lot of walks in the rain alone, playing at parks in the rain alone. I was isolated and still am.

And people just don't understand the daily routine of stay at home parents, it's far, far more rigid than going out to a job because if you get it wrong, your child can die, especially a baby. I didn't get to talk to other adults, I didn't get lunch or tea breaks, I barely got to go to the toilet in peace. You do A, B, C, D, E all the way to Z. Then you get up and do it all over again, then the next day, then the next day. For 10 years. A job outside the home is freedom and social life. I noticed during the pandemic that people really struggled when they had to stay at home and look after their kids 24/7. Hey, welcome to the real world, parents!

Also I think there is more comparison now days. Sooooo many celebrities living fun, exciting, free lives all over social media that everyone else is dying of envy.

I look at these celebs and think that there seems to be a very small group of people living a fun, exciting life while the vast, vast majority can only look enviously at them from a distance away. My life has been very boring for decades, I feel like a drone with every day the same. If most people feel like me, no wonder we're all getting bitter and nasty.

Last edited by KitLily on 15 Feb 2023, 9:28 am, edited 2 times in total.

Today I feel like I've lived 95% of my life.
Maybe even more.

I wish I've only lived 50% of my life.....

I’m not in my 40’s yet, but I will say that I’m glad that life is not eternal. I wouldn’t want to live forever.