Tired of life as a pissing contest

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Tonight's a bit of a special night for me.

My dad was a late bloomer. Good guy, functions something like a patriarch of our extended family in that he was the youngest of his generation. He was born in 1936, his oldest sister was maybe 30 years his senior and all of his brothers and his youngest sister was at least a few years older.

He was 43 and 20 days when I was born. I'm 43 and 20 days today.

What I think's dug at me a bit was not so much that the martial arts school that I was at from 2008 until this year folded up as my instructor and his wife moved to the gulf coast of Florida (near Ft. Meyers), but the way in which things socially iced over.

What I've learned is that I'm never too old to have people wash their hands of me or treat me like I'm not fully adult. It started happening as they were on their way out this summer and I helped them pack the school up. It happened when I was at a barbeque at another classmate's house when a couple of the other guys who were also there and formerly at the school gave me signals that even for all this time that I've known them that I haven't earned their respect or even lost some of their respect for still 'being the same'. The best I can guess of what that was about - not having a family, not having a house of my own, not getting really into all the things they're into like bikes, or sports, the one guy who was into western esoteric traditions always had the need to cut me off if I was showing any signs that I knew anything he didn't, his wife actually chewed him out at the barbeque for needing to put people down if they talked about anything that was over his head (and as expected the group kind of ignored her on that and gave her a bit of a silent treatment as if she'd disrupted the decorum - she was right but it didn't matter). Seems like I've always had at least subclinical narcissists in my groups and it's been a constant that I get hammered for being a bit... well... innocent... rather than having that hammered out of me so long ago that there's no trace of it left (in your 40's your supposed to apparently be utterly materialistic and if you're not that way you really haven't grown up). I also see where a lot of people see honesty, and anything that looks a bit like innocence, as signs of mental retardation - which always tends to leech respect over time completely without having your life go backward.

I get that people measure each other by bank accounts, marriages, property, are you coaching CYO sports, and if you don't have those things - regardless of what you've overcome - you're not a full adult in their eyes and shouldn't be treated as such. Also for not seeming super-confident or not chasing other guys around and turning it into a pissing contest anytime they treat me like a bit of an idiot.... they have no idea what it's like to be neuro-atypical, it's a place where you're so used to having it put to you 'If you aren't exactly like us in every way you aren't really an adult and don't have the same rights', if you can't get traction with people even when you're right (or worse - they need to even get more condescending if you've in some way shown yourself to be the bigger person) - you just get that it's an ego battle where it's the size of the ego that matters, not the decency of the person.... it's not a game I enjoy playing but TBH it also scares me with respect to my future, that is - do you get to be a 'person' in most people's eyes if you aren't strutting around with your chest out and fomenting 'misunderstandings' as ways to land-grab status from other men?

Hitting 43 years and 20 days, the age my dad was when I was born, and having no sign of super gainful career (yes, I'm lucky to be making over 40K per year - just no house, family, etc., just investments)... I really have to hope that I'm allowed to have my life be more than this. If life is just a pissing contest between men and who has what, who has what kind of barbeque grill, who has what kind of house or car, who has more status than the next guy... it's brutally boring and I really have to hope that there's a life beyond it.

There used to be a tarot group that got together maybe 45 minutes away at a coffee shop. Even if my interest in that in particular ebbs sometimes I'd still much rather get together with these people again and talk about things that are actually interesting to me (and yes - people who fail at the narcissism and back-stabbing games tend to be interested in spirituality - them and almost no one else). Sadly it seems like that group sort of closed up in 2020, I jumped on the Facebook meetup to see if they were active again or looking to get things back together but no luck.

I still take my walks, my shoulders were f'd and as I've been continuing on the bone and joint supplements (recovery from something like 15 years of proton pump inhibitors, ie. Nexium and Prilosec, as well as workout injuries) I feel like they've been coming back, part of me hopes that I can join a vinyasa yoga group or something for additional fitness by either late spring or early summer 2023 but I'm really hoping that the same cycle - ie. people finding me 'sort of' interesting to then just throw me over the shoulder when they realize I'm not on the fast track to family, property, etc.... that's what I'm not looking forward to, and I'm hoping that it won't be another social circle that takes narcissism for social authority where the narcissists take the lead and get offended every time I say things that are out of social pecking order.

Hope that wasn't pure babble but.... I'm disgusted by the notion that the patterns mentioned above could simply close over me and make me a shut-in, ie. not finding the right people, and that my 50's, 60's, and 70's could close out on that pattern without anything really good happening. That puts you actually in a perpetually losing game where if you aren't out scalping status you're less and less worthy of anyone's time.

On one level I sort of don't care about having a wife and kids if I simply don't find the right person. It's really dangerous out there for example and I don't see myself in the situation where I can just give away half my assets and say 'Well - at least that was something'. I simply don't trust the work world enough not to have a significant financial buffer and if it's true that for me to even have to worry about that disqualifies me - I have to hope that there are people who I can grow old with, share interests with, people close to my heart who I can allow in that space, people who won't shun me for not having the wife, kids, property, toys, etc..

Technically the future's unknowable, I just really have to hope that life doesn't keep getting more Machiavellian. If that's the case - things will be quite lonely. It's also a disgusting thought that, as you get older, you're supposed to be wiser, better with people, and yet if everything increasingly becomes a pissing contest then that relative growth is almost null and void because the junior high games never end. In that case everyone is their own island of pride, everyone has to be jostling for status, and through pride everyone has to be utterly alone because the alternative is not being 'better than' everyone around them.

I also realize that I have snapped a bit at people around here sometimes, I tend to do that when things seem territorial or when I feel like they're trying to pull a status game. Sometimes it's required, I wouldn't ask for sympathy there, I don't want to do it because it's tiring but sadly it seems like the status meter is something like the HP meter in a video game and so much of being on this planet isn't about living life - it's about wasting life in status contests, knowing that whoever gives in and just wants to live gets beaten and 'owned' by people who are more status-minded and haven't given that up.


Anyway - verbal masturbation bout over. Hopefully someone can find something I said above useful or relatable, and if not oh well.

I’m tired of life as a “pissing contest,” too.

I don’t even HAVE a prostate

If you are tired of life as a "pissing contest" you can always choose not to play it like one. Nothing out there says you have to play by anyone else's rules or measure yourself against anyone else. In this day and age if you are able to be self-sufficient that counts for a lot, and it means you're doing better than a good many folks.

Anyone who would "wash their hands" of you or not treat you the way you should be treated isn't really someone you want in your life. If you want something better in the way of a social circle, or a life partner, work towards finding them. People are out there, Age isn't what makes you wiser and better with people - its practice, and experience and the lessons you learn and grow from. Age just make you older. If you find things you enjoy doing, chances are you will find others who enjoy them too. If you surround yourself with enough like-minded people you'll stand a better chance of widening your social circle. If that doesn't work, why not aim in the other direction, sometimes opposites can be challenging, interesting and growth-inducing. I think too, that if you look less for signs of status-seeking and Self-centeredness in others, you might just find less of it.

I learned a rather ugly lesson the last time I was out of town with one of the spirituality groups that I'd go visit. It really felt like I was hiding out among a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of humanity, and the moment I went out to eat by myself I'd see the 'other type' of mentality (the sacred white light of shibboleth social conformity which sees anything that doesn't reflect itself perfectly as dysgenic) pretty much walled up around me anywhere that I wasn't specifically with the group I was attending. Pockets of relative non-judgment or even curiosity are these tiny little islands among a species that otherwise seems like it only understands or respects capacity to bully or psychically self-mutilate until being the same ugly pressed brick everyone else is.

In a way I get the sense that my original post was a bit like complaining that the sky is blue or that water is wet, ie. pointless and useless.

I guess life pretty much has to pass us all by, be wasted by Darwinian evolution, and the answer is probably grow a pair (or strap the one I have back on) and get over it. Life's about muddy cocks and not a lot else. I've heard a particular ev psych guy say that the male sex drive is tragic because it utterly overshoots any possibility of equilibrium - I'd say our loneliness and desire to share the best of ourselves is equally tragic for similar reasons (have a soul and die or be a psychopath and live - that sort of thing).

Maybe even if I'm lucky, some day far in the future, this way of thinking won't feel like self-inflicted brain damage anymore. I can only hope.

Giving this a couple more nights to gestate - I'm first of all lucky that I got out to see relatives, family both older and my own age, people who have a lot of respect for me and vice verse.

This evening after having a particularly enjoyable discussion of life with an online friend, taking a good psychedelic dose and getting out for a walk - I'm being reminded that what I'm really made of is love. I'm made of a desire to see the world work around me in harmony. I'm built of a desire to see myself in harmony with myself and with others to whatever degree I can.

I got to thinking a bit more as well about the nature of evil - it's largely society's failure of as many people meeting genetic proclivities to respond to necessity (ie. plenty of would-be psychopaths never really manifest because it's never called out of them). It's the places where ego and narcissism shut down collaboration.

I think of the whirling blade spiral that optimizes for psychopathy, I was talking to my friend about it earlier, and I felt like I was - at the same time - sort of describe the solution to her as well, ie. that to whatever degree life traumatizes us we have to throw as many good thing in to our systems to counteract the violence. The worse the violence the more important the need to have tools that can facilitate recovery. It's not a thing or a place where one can just stake out a middle position and be said to be in the most defensible position, rather the the bladed vortex is death and your ability not to capitulate to it is critical.

This is where I'm incredibly grateful for the musicians of the world, the poets of the world, the mystics of the world, these are people who are really great at helping us regenerate ourselves. Same thing for loved ones and family to the degree that relationships lack serious dysfunction.

I feel myself light up, even sort of 'come back to life' anytime I'm able to be helpful, anytime I'm able to have open exchange of ideas with people.

If anything I just feel like, as a culture, we need to do more in order to mobilize those system, and really consider that ongoing trauma is a big f*****g deal, ie. something we really - really - need to tend to in a more organized fashion, to keep as many human nodes on the grid as possible from going dark.

I don't think we have anything for ASD in my area. There used to be a husband and wife who were psychologists and were big in the community, the husband had a support group but he was also ADHD, took on a lot of society's platitudes which meant a lot of well-intended bad advice.

I think this evening what I realized is that I'm still pulling glass out from what my life was from 2015 thru really last year, and I might be pulling glass out for the next couple years at least to properly reestablish a healthy identity.

So on that front I feel like it would be better for me to get that sorted first, as well as knowing what parts of me are knock-on solid, before I put myself out there to lead anything. I get the impression that will progress but it's going to take time.

Really the best way I can describe it - as I did in my OP - I still have no idea whether or not it's 'actually' over, I cross my fingers and hope it is, but the best way I can describe it - if some dynamic in the world attacks you to the point of outright trying to kill you, there's a part of you that wants to reverse-engineer the most reliable understanding it can of what that threat is - while at the same time considering the risk that if it rains down too hard or consistently that you could be eaten by that dynamic and become what was attacking you. What I'm hoping for is that I can continue to excavate, clear debris, and make sure that the real / proper 'me' is coming back and that it's safe from the psychopath emulator (what resulted from contact with what tried to take me out). I think that process is going well but I want to follow it further to make sure things are back to what they should be.

Just need to accept life is a pissing contest...and just move on

I agree with what Mona said.

The alternative is to repeat what seems to be my best understanding of the NT internal mantra - 'Life is rape. Rape is life'.

Dealing with external hardship is one thing. It's the need to be completely butt-ugly on the inside to survive that I really have a problem with (ie. stabbing your own soul with glass and dogshit so the monsters see another monster and are less likely to attack). That's the part that really is rape.

I think there may be more spiritual and non-pissing contest people than you think.

Start volunteering for hospice and discover all the angels there. Take a look at the people who work to protect the rights of people with disabilities. Get into one of these subsets of humanity and find it there. Working in these fields has been humbling.

As for spiritual groups, you might try looking into the more established mystical practices rather than the ones that have popped up more recently. Quakers use communal mysticism, for example.