Are any of you quite sad about ‘where you’ve ended up’ in life, despite your very best efforts?

[Pleasegivemeyourwisdom]

I’m sad to say, I think I am 😞

Have had a few hefty life blows along route (haven’t we all) and whilst still standing, I’m pretty sad about where it’s left me (on the inside). Not the type of sad you can just shake off or fake it till you make it either. Only the energy to keep on keeping on, not the energy to ‘make my life miles better with what I now know’ type thing.

guess I’m just looking for a little solidarity on this pensive evening x

This exactly.

This thread is so moving and it resonates with me so much. My life is just an utter car crash and my mental health is appalling and if I didn’t have my children I’d be gone cause I actually can’t stand living with the emotional pain and financial issues.

I'm 50 and have daily thoughts about my life not being where it should be and that time has passed me by. I'm constantly wishing I could go back in time to make different choices. I'm trying to shift my thinking but my thought process slips back into the same pattern.

Yeah me. I look back at myself at 18 and I could shake myself.

I am 33 and on paper have a lovely life. I have a DS, partner, nice house. But in reality, my partner has very serious depression which is dragging us down daily and leaving a horrible mood in the house. I’m not on the mortgage due to issues with my credit score so really the lovely house isn’t in anyway mine, yesterday my DP told me he thinks his feelings are changing for me. We haven’t had sex in 2 years so no second baby at any time. I have depression myself and cry at least once a day.

DS is a happy boy and I love the bones of him but I hate being a mum, it bores me so much. I have a good job but insist very stressful and recently I know I’ve been doing my worst there which is not like me but I cannot help it.

then add that to numerous deaths, illnesses, lost friendships etc in my life.

I just don’t know how my life got like this. I truly don’t. I would run away tomorrow if I could and never ever come backn

In a similar position. Have worked hard for years and throughout all the challenges (husband left, ADHD child) I have made the best of it and soldiered on. It has been lonely and gruelling and my one constant was that I had a good job and income. Now that I've just been made redundant I don't even have that and I'm terrified for the future. I've held it all together for so long and now it's crumbling before my eyes.
Like others I am lonely and wouldn't be too distressed to not wake up one day soon.

A lot of support and understanding here. Yes loneliness is a killer. I live in a village and the friendship group I had (when all our kids were at school) is long gone. We don't see anyone despite people being aware of our situation. I have 2 friends in the nearest town, the rest are hundreds of miles away. My Mum is kind but can't retain anything that's said to her for very long. If it weren't for my sister who is so supportive despite being so busy herself, I don't know what I'd do. Love ❤️ to all.

I must say I dont have expectations about where life may go. None of us have any proper control over what may happen.

Also meant to answer this properly.

I am classic 'gifted kid to burnout' syndrome. Tipped for Cambridge/Oxford and a big career, deeply fucked up childhood meant I came apart at the seams in my teens, and then I never really recovered. Now I have two chronic illnesses and subsist on benefits and tramadol knowing I'll never have the career everyone hyped (I am a huge disappointment to my living parent), and my DP recently told me he doesn't want to get married after all so I have to evaluate staying in a relationship that just had its goalposts moved or being single again in my 40s.

So. I have a lot to be grateful for, but wow, I am not feeling it today. Just so broken and lonely.

I am one of the most successful people that I know. When I was at school, doing homework every night whilst my parents watched TV, I dreamed about being able to get in from work and watch TV every night. Despite setting out in a law career, I now am a sahm with a part time job. I don't get my evenings to watch TV due to having kids, but I am able to sit and watch a bit of TV during the day with a coffee and biscuits. Being successful is not about how hard you work, how much money you have, your job title, impressing others.... it's simply about setting out to achieve what you want, whatever that is, even if that is eating biscuits in front of TV!

I also learnt that nothing comes for free. Opportunities don't land in your lap and life is full of hurdles. Those that I know who are 'successful' have made huge sacrifices, usually put of their leisure and family time. What you don't see on Instagram or FB is photos of them getting up at 5am in the dark for a 2 hour commute to work etc, or working on the train on the way home at 8pm. I would absolutely hate that. Half my friends are really jealous of my lifestyle, which they could have, if they were prepared to give up some of the trappings of wealth. But they define themselves by status and job title which is sad.

I often imagine myself to be on a survival programme with absolutely nothing. Then imagine how I would feel if someone gave me a tent or a sleeping bag, or a meal, or a hot shower. Then I reflect on how I am lying in my bed in a dry room on a comfortable mattress, feeling safe and secure, having been fed. I try to remind myself that life is about comfort and not things. That's not to say that I don't appreciate nice things etc, it's just that I try to remind myself what I have instead of what I don't have. It's not always easy but redefining what it is to be successful has helped.

No, a first generation typical antipsychotic called Pericyazine 😖😱💔😢

Lest people feel that my last post was overly smug, I have faced my share of life's hurdles. Alcoholic father with mental health issues growing up, who died. Difficult mother. Lost our home growing up. Suffered with illness and anxiety which has scuppered my legal career. Husband nearly died a few years ago due to sepsis and was in a coma on life support when I had a baby and young child, but he recovered (we're extremely lucky), albeit not fully. Both amazing step father and sister are currently terminally ill.

I have found the NHS referral service for low mood/anxiety to be really helpful, so would highly recommend it. It's really helped me. As has joining a pottery group!

But letting go of the artificial notion of stress and that people have it easier than me, has definitely helped my mental health and contentment.

@Thecatmaster smug? Not in the least. Wise words from you.

Yes. I didn't sign up for all the shit things that have happened to me over the last decade. My life has not gone how I thought it would. However, I don't dwell, try and make the best of things and always hope for light around the corner.

Yes. I made some really stupid mistakes when I was young, and now regret them. Wish I could get a do over. Hindsight is 20-20.

I'm not in employment which is a huge embarrassment to my parents.

But I'm thankful for the things that have worked in my favour.

Not everyone I went to school with is still alive.

Thank you for all your replies.

Knowing I’m not alone in my feelings, has really made me feel less isolated.

I appreciate each and every one of your posts and know I will reflect on this thread for years to come (when I need to).

xx

Hi DidIplanthis, are you me? Well no, as I don't have ASD (according to the internet anyway) but otherwise I can relate completely to everything you said. I've never been good enough either, and every time I try to claw my way out of the scrapheap, something happens to push me back down again.
Here's my life in a nutshell: I have a prestigious degree, which nobody thought I'd get (I'm dyscalculic and was bullied and considered unteachably stupid at my ex- secondary modern) but that didn't get me a graduate job or even a decent non graduate job. I've been bumming around in minimum wage jobs or on benefits ever since. I've been the black sheep of the family since I was three, when the first golden child brother was born. I spent the next almost four decades trying to prove to my parents I wasn't the spiteful stupid person they think I am, before I realised eventually that they will never be proud of me whatever I do, and that it doesn't really matter. Emotionally, I've drawn a line under it and am low contact. They are impeccably polite to me on Skype calls now, and I don't know whether by pulling away I've unwittingly manipulated them into treating me better, or whether they are just preoccupied with their own stuff now I'm out of the country and they have moved away too. Ultimate golden child sibling DB2 has recently accused me of having driven our ex alcoholic, severely ill DF to drink; there's no particular back story here, except that I'm a single mother and an objectively low achiever, and all the family's hurt feelings/addictions/debt/stress has been deemed to be my fault all my DBs' lives, so they don't question the narrative that everything is Nasty Sister's fault. I didn't properly question it myself until the last handful of years. Naturally this has affected my choice of friends and partners: I was alone and bullied and vilified for so long that I really thought every normal, healthy person would be revolted by me, so I tried to choose people who I could "help", and we all know how that ends. I have three DCs from different deadbeat dads, no maintenance. I take responsibility for the choices I made, but I think men are like one's family of origin: you spend your youth frantically trying and failing to get their approval, then belatedly realise that they and their opinions don't matter and can get in the bin where they belong.

I moved abroad during Covid to escape an illegal eviction which I didn't have the energy to fight. Already had a fixer upper house in France, bought for peanuts - that, plus the degree, are the two achievements of my life. (Look at me, I'm an Oxford graduate and I own a Georgian townhouse outright! I sound so fancy, on paper!) Couldn't get work for the first few months, spent all our savings, would have starved but for food banks, whose help I refused to accept for months - I always remember my ex fiancé saying he would commit suicide rather than go begging, and I still had that residual pride too. Managed to get the usual crap minimum wage jobs when the economy opened up, including one as a supply teacher: the first and only "professional" job of my life for what that's worth, although the pay and conditions were worse than the cleaning lady's. I chucked it in but am reluctantly going back because care work was doing my head in. From next week I'm starting a placement at a rough residential school whose previous supply teacher lasted a week. At least I know what to expect this time round...

Yes. I have a nice house, cats and a job I live. But no husband or children.

@Thecatmaster Your first post isn't smug, but eminently reasonable. I'm at the age when a lot of people I knew at university are very successful, even running the country. Previous posters have alluded to the structural reasons for inequality (or at least for intergenerational inequality) and it's very positive to be aware of that because it stops unnecessary self blame and protects us from believing some of the wilder claims of scammy hustle culture gurus. But there's also a place for the individual responsibility that you emphasize in your post. When I saw in the papers a few months back that a boy I used to know in college had become a cabinet minister, I saw instantly what he had done that I had not done, together with the considerable advantages he had that most of us didn't. I can't help not being privately educated nor aristocratic, but I can reflect that he did indeed spend his 20s and 30s probably getting up at 5 a.m. and commuting for two hours, as well as shouldering a lawyer's workload that would kill most people, while I was just a single mother on income support. When I saw what he achieved I was mostly just happy for him (political differences aside) because he was a nice, laid back, polite guy, not Slytherin-esque like most of the other posh types. I think of him often these days, because it's not often you get to see both the "before" and the "after" of a successful public figure, and it's like discovering the "secret sauce" of the ultra-successful - though it's not surprising really, a mixture of hereditary advantage and hard work, focus and charisma.

I'm trying to learn the lessons of this instead of being like "Waaah, my life is hard, the universe hates me". The problem is that succeeding (however we define it) in mid life is at least partly a matter of damage limitation, and we can't turn the clock back. I've started (privately!) thinking of myself as a "pre-success" rather than continuing to internalise the world's opinion of me as a failure. It sounds deluded, but I think it works a bit like "manifesting" in that your mind is primed to be optimistic and to look for opportunities instead of focusing on past errors, which would only lead to depression and to giving up, and this was definitely a big part of the problem for me as a young adult.

@Brexile

I'm trying to learn the lessons of this instead of being like "Waaah, my life is hard, the universe hates me". The problem is that succeeding (however we define it) in mid life is at least partly a matter of damage limitation, and we can't turn the clock back.

I've started (privately!) thinking of myself as a "pre-success" rather than continuing to internalise the world's opinion of me as a failure. It sounds deluded, but I think it works a bit like "manifesting" in that your mind is primed to be optimistic and to look for opportunities instead of focusing on past errors, which would only lead to depression and to giving up, and this was definitely a big part of the problem for me as a young adult.

Love this...

Yes. I feel like my life has been fucked since childhood. Probably always will be.

Hope you feel better/things change for you op and others 💐

This is such a helpful thread to me. It’s reminding me that a difficult start in life does stay with you and influence you and that considering mine, I’ve done ok and shouldn’t beat myself up. I had a very abusive dad and a mum who just stood by, plus other abuse that happened because they didn’t protect me. I threw myself into academic work and got some sense of control by getting straight As and a 1st at university.

So on paper I was this high flyer. But the low self esteem and lack of role models emotionally meant I made big mistakes with relationships, and ended up spending 20 years with the wrong man who was a “mr nice guy” but passive aggressive and lazy, and I spent a lot of that time unhappy and thinking I must be the problem and trying to fix it. My family background meant I had no support when I had kids and mr nice guy prioritised his career and did very little despite my endless efforts to get him to step up.

I have a creative job that I love and I know I’m lucky, but it doesn’t pay much and there’s no progression. So with that and having kids and no help I’ve worked like a dog for decades but still don’t have much money at all and live in a little flat and feel bad that I’m not rolling in it like all my DC friends’ parents seem to be.

it’s not awful. I know lots of people are having it much tougher and I’m very lucky to have a mortgage, my career, to have had my DC, that ex does pay maintenance (and is well paid) and has stepped up more since we separated, that if the shit really hit the fan I could move somewhere cheaper, that I’m reasonably healthy in my 50s (touch wood). But fuck me, it’s a treadmill doing this alone and I’ve given up on finding a nice man or ever not having to stress about money.

Life is muddling through, for so many people, and it really can throw some shit that lands very unfairly. And even someone who I might envy, who has a nice house with a garden, and doesn’t have to worry about money, and has a happy relationship with their soulmate, could be bludgeoned with a health problem or bereavement or whatever.

the older I get, the more I ponder about the bizarreness of life, the universe and everything and the more baffled I feel!

I'm trying to learn the lessons of this instead of being like "Waaah, my life is hard, the universe hates me". The problem is that succeeding (however we define it) in mid life is at least partly a matter of damage limitation, and we can't turn the clock back. I've started (privately!) thinking of myself as a "pre-success" rather than continuing to internalise the world's opinion of me as a failure.

Thanks for this Brexile, I’ll try this too! I do still dream and I do try to do positive things for myself, take up hobbies, look after my mental health and look out for opportunities. The trouble is that takes up even more time and I’m so knackered. But I think mindset and outlook are very important and what you say helps me to give myself a kick up the arse. I love “pre-success”.

That's what wrecked my health. I have a life long neurological condition now.

A helpful thread to me too. I’m listening all and relate to so much.