Nothing to look forward to

[jimmy7754]

I don't want to reveal personal information but I'll try to make it work. I come from a middle class suburban household. I did poorly in high school and had low self esteem yet I managed to get myself going towards my last few years. I ended up in college for something in the arts (mistake). I did poorly on the SATs and got a terrible GPA but was crafty in regards to the arts. I managed to get a Bachelors degree in the arts. I didn't network well in college and my dad passed away in my early 20s. I had an apartment during my college years and moved back home which was another mistake. I feel I've gone backward every since. Financially I'm in debt still but should've lived in the moment and forced myself out of here. College is suppose to make you earn more yet I've earned significantly and even more less than people who've gone and my hometown friends have messed me up mentally due to my gullibility and loneliness. I don't have any successful relationships. I showed promise when I was starting out my adult life but my family feel apart. Now COVID has made get isolated. I had my life together in 2019 but i became my own worse enemy. I tumbled through a horrible relationship that moved way too fast and ended suddenly due to me being naive and stupid. I blame my lack of business skills and poor judgement for so much in my later life. I have always been talented but horrible as a planner. I've been to the ER tried SSRIs ran marathons played tennis studied something else entirely pushed myself only to end up in a traumatic injury and worse off. Im doing an outpatient program and it's making me feel out of place. The older I get the less Im growing as a human being. It is frightening how this world can make feel your walking on egg shells as you get older. To anyone struggling with their life with trauma and regret and why this or that.. if you have your health and you under 30 years old.. you can turn this around. I plummeted. Delayed gratification and small tiny habits and planning is an absolute necessity. I feel like I'm going towards my end this year and if I come out the other side it's going to not look pretty. I don't smoke, drink or do many drugs yet I tried getting rid of me numerous of times.

Ive been a fan of David Foster Wallace. I wish I read him religiously. He really teaches you how to think and empathize and be a rational human being but he also writes up the most agonizing and screaming for help people in his stories. If a guy that smart and intuitive became suicidal and dealt with severe depression then I'm in for a serious hard time.

I don't know how to cope anymore. I can't watch movies, shows or dream of becoming a better version of myself. I turned into someone I never wanted to become. There are crucial turning points in ones life I feel when you have to make a choice. It's always in your adult years. I had the resources and the ability but I blew it. I got lost, insecure and totally insane. I threw away relationships and connections with sheer stupidity. I over exercised to get myself to feel better only to realize it wasn't getting my life where I needed it to be.

To summerize how I feel in my life now :

"I feel I've climbed my mountain in life only to end up having empty pockets."

 

[miserableguy5694]

Very sorry for your situation. In some key ways I'm in the same boat.

 

[just_wanna_die]

I know what you mean. Without getting into too much detail, I'm 52 and I ask myself:
Am I any happier today than I was 26 years ago? Answer: no!
Am I any healthier now than 26 years ago? No.
Am I any younger now than I was 26 years ago? Of course not.
Am I any richer now than 26 years ago? No.
Am I (or the world) more free now than 26 years ago? No.
Are any of my loved ones any better off now than 26 years ago? No.

I can ask myself these same questions from a future perspective:

Will I be any happier/healthier/younger/richer/freer/and my loved ones be better off 26 years from now (in the year 2047) when I reach the age of 78?

Again, the most likely and obvious answer will still be no.

In the end, I feel all life is pointless. Our "reward" for a long life is sickness and death. Everything we have in our life will eventually be lost. Does not matter if it was given to us or if we earn it with our own effort. We lose our grandparents, our parents, our pets, our friends (they move away, have a falling out, or die), we lose our siblings and/or children (if any, when they move away or die), we lose our jobs/careers (get laid off, retire, economy changes, etc..), we lose our money (most older people have lost theirs to taxes, inflation and/or swindlers, bad investments), we lose our homes (to fire, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, foreclosure, lawsuits, etc...), we lose our spouse (divorce or death), we lose our youth, we lose our health, some may lose their memories, and eventually, we ALL lose our lives. Life is just one long string of losses. No matter what you try to do to live as long and as healthy as you can, you work hard to climb that mountain and end up with empty pockets, to borrow your quote, and you will still die. All we do in this life is kill time until time kills us.

 

[jimmy7754]

I know what you mean. Without getting into too much detail, I'm 52 and I ask myself:
Am I any happier today than I was 26 years ago? Answer: no!
Am I any healthier now than 26 years ago? No.
Am I any younger now than I was 26 years ago? Of course not.
Am I any richer now than 26 years ago? No.
Am I (or the world) more free now than 26 years ago? No.
Are any of my loved ones any better off now than 26 years ago? No.

I can ask myself these same questions from a future perspective:

Will I be any happier/healthier/younger/richer/freer/and my loved ones be better off 26 years from now (in the year 2047) when I reach the age of 78?

Again, the most likely and obvious answer will still be no.

In the end, I feel all life is pointless. Our "reward" for a long life is sickness and death. Everything we have in our life will eventually be lost. Does not matter if it was given to us or if we earn it with our own effort. We lose our grandparents, our parents, our pets, our friends (they move away, have a falling out, or die), we lose our siblings and/or children (if any, when they move away or die), we lose our jobs/careers (get laid off, retire, economy changes, etc..), we lose our money (most older people have lost theirs to taxes, inflation and/or swindlers, bad investments), we lose our homes (to fire, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, foreclosure, lawsuits, etc...), we lose our spouse (divorce or death), we lose our youth, we lose our health, some may lose their memories, and eventually, we ALL lose our lives. Life is just one long string of losses. No matter what you try to do to live as long and as healthy as you can, you work hard to climb that mountain and end up with empty pockets, to borrow your quote, and you will still die. All we do in this life is kill time until time kills us.

I feel knowing this from an early adult life perspective can help mitigate these challenges which can gain an approach towards things in a more pragmatic way. I, on the other hand have not accomplished this.

I feel I grew up too alternative and not mainstream. I didn't do enough critical thinking and I wasn't strict enough. My father never helped me mentally and he never took care of his health at all yet he made enough money to provide but never in a advisable way. Communication was always a serious issue.

I'm at a serious loss here now in 2022. I watched the documentary "the bridge" and read stories here on this forum. Suicide is very difficult and not easy at all. I eventually landed myself in a health science school in my 20s and passed anatomy and physiology courses and did some cadavers. The human body wants to survive and it never wants to stop yet the universe is trying to get rid of us. It is horrible. There is no afterlife and anyone who saw a child finally recognize his/her self knows that is when we are sentient.. online.. aware. Even if you believe in something like "reincarnation".. it's another scary thought because that too will come to an end. I'm sure we figured out that life came into play on earth by chance. And if there are other habitats like this one out there then they could be just as cruel because why wouldn't they? If the earth could sing it wouldn't be praising human beings.. it wants to get rid of us. We are destroying this place day in day out. I can't figure out how to be altruistic and happy anymore at all.

I feel I've aimed too low. I've got bored and Ive got lost. Dead end jobs with benefits is all i can accomplish. I don't want to make it to the other side of 2022 but I don't have the courage to get myself out of here yet. I feel as if I'm damaged goods. My brain is getting worse and worse now.

 

[just_wanna_die]

@jimmy7754

I feel knowing this from an early adult life perspective can help mitigate these challenges which can gain an approach towards things in a more pragmatic way. I, on the other hand have not accomplished this.

I feel I grew up too alternative and not mainstream. I didn't do enough critical thinking and I wasn't strict enough. My father never helped me mentally and he never took care of his health at all yet he made enough money to provide but never in a advisable way. Communication was always a serious issue.

I'm at a serious loss here now in 2022. I watched the documentary "the bridge" and read stories here on this forum. Suicide is very difficult and not easy at all. I eventually landed myself in a health science school in my 20s and passed anatomy and physiology courses and did some cadavers. The human body wants to survive and it never wants to stop yet the universe is trying to get rid of us. It is horrible. There is no afterlife and anyone who saw a child finally recognize his/her self knows that is when we are sentient.. online.. aware. Even if you believe in something like "reincarnation".. it's another scary thought because that too will come to an end. I'm sure we figured out that life came into play on earth by chance. And if there are other habitats like this one out there then they could be just as cruel because why wouldn't they? If the earth could sing it wouldn't be praising human beings.. it wants to get rid of us. We are destroying this place day in day out. I can't figure out how to be altruistic and happy anymore at all.

I feel I've aimed too low. I've got bored and Ive got lost. Dead end jobs with benefits is all i can accomplish. I don't want to make it to the other side of 2022 but I don't have the courage to get myself out of here yet. I feel as if I'm damaged goods. My brain is getting worse and worse now.

Have you ever read Lucretius' "On the Nature of Things"? Here are a few excerpts by the Roman poet, 94-55 BC.

Death is nothing to us, of no concern whatsoever, once it is appreciated that
the mind is mortal.

Just as in the past we had no sensation of discomfort when the
Carthaginians were converging to attack […] so too, when we will no longer exist […]
you can take it that nothing at all will be able to affect us and to stir our sensation – not if
the earth collapses into sea, and sea into sky.

Even if the nature of our mind and the power of our spirit do have sensation after they are
torn from our bodies, that is still nothing to us, who are constituted by the conjunction of body
and spirit.

[On reincarnation] Or supposing that after death the passage of time will bring our matter back together and
reconstitute it in its present arrangement, and the light of life will be restored to us, even
that eventuality would be of no concern to us, once our self-recollection was interrupted.
Nor do our selves which existed in the past concern us now: we feel no anguish about them.

For if there is going to be unhappiness and suffering, the person must also himself
exist at that same time, for the evil to be able to befall him. Since death robs him of this,
preventing the existence of the person for the evils to be heaped upon, you can tell that
there is nothing for us to fear in death, that he who does not exist cannot be unhappy, and
that when immortal death snatches away a mortal life it is no different from never having
been born.

'No more for you the welcome of a joyful home and a good wife. No more will your children
run to snatch the first kiss, and move your heart with unspoken delight. No more will you be
able to protect the success of your affairs and your dependents. Unhappy man,' they say,
'unhappily robbed by a single hateful day of all those rewards of life." What they fail to add is:
'Nor does any yearning for those things remain in you.' If they properly saw this with their mind,
and followed it up in their words, they would unshackle themselves of great anguish and fear.

As to a dead end job and benefits, or if you were a billionaire, modern fiat money is a fraud that is designed to steal the labor of the people without payment, making us all slaves to an evil system. We are on a prison planet. Too much to get into here, but it is.

"The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight-of-hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen, they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits and control credit."

~Sir Josiah Stamp, (1880-1941) President of the Bank of England in the 1920's, then the second richest man in Great Britain.

 

[FuneralCry]

It sounds like you have been through a lot. I know it can be a dreadful feeling when everything is hopeless. I'm sorry you are suffering so much. Whatever happens, I wish you the best.