to think I would have my life sorted by the time I was 30

[doorbellringer]

I always placed 30 as the magic number I would have my life sorted and be done with my ishooes. But I am 32 and find they are still as prolific. I thought I would be savvy, less sarcastic/cynical and altogether a more pleasant person to be around; but no the issues remain and I think I may have given up on any hopes or dreams I may have had in place of realism and tough reality. This is not meant to be depressing, I have a wonderful dh and ds but can't help but think an I getting it all wrong?

Depends what you mean by sorted, really.
To many, having a wonderful DH and DS means you are sorted!
I think a lot of people never really feel truly sorted...

I don't think YABU to have thought you would be sorted by 30 - it's a common "magic number", I think but you are certainly not alone in not feeling sorted at 32...

Not sure what you mean by issues but maybe some counselling would be a way of addressing it?

I guess I still feel sarcastic and passive aggressive. I know thats a big red flag. Ds is 12 weeks and I have just been diagnosed pnd. I don't want to pass any issues I have onto him and subsequent dc.

Ah, new baby and pnd is going to have an impact on your sortedness. I too had pnd.

I also have had an expectation that at some point (30, 40, 50!) I'd have conquered my ishoos, and to some extent I have, but what surprises me is that any big life change (eg new baby, new job, bereavement, moving abroad etc) brings them back out of the closet again.

Can you use this period of pnd-treatment to seek counselling? At least then you might have more insight and some tactics.

Well the ishooes started cropping up too at that time.
Stpped working, child to raise, new "you"? old "you" who are you?

I think its the biggest mis-conception about growing up. We dont get sorted. With evry decade we dig deeper into our insecurities.
We just to learn to live with some,loose some.

Enjoy yor baby right now and take care of yourself

OP, all I can say is Hahahahahaha!

I also thought I would be retired on a Sunseeker by 40. Now nearly 54 and still working and still trying to figure life out. Think it stops when you fall off your perch.

Also having read your post proiperly now maybe you should go to the doctors and get some help, and go easy on yourself, its a marathon, not a sprint. And kids are surprisingly resiliant, they will forgive most things as long as they get love and cuddles. The fact that you are aware of the issues in a big step in not passing them on. Take heart.

What Oldmumsy said.

I hit 30 feeling the same way, I'm now 37 and its taken 7 years for me to finally accepted that life is a process, the solution isn't the important thing sometimes, the steps to take to tackle issues are. I won't make the same mistake at 40.

Instead of thinking 'where would I like to be' I am thinking 'how far have I come?' and the answer is much more positive.

My character flaws are still the same, but I'm aware of them, working on them, managing them. I will never change my character, but I can continuously watch myself so that they don't have a negative impact on my life.

Seeing as you have PND in addition to reaching a landmark birthday, it must be very difficult to take pride in how far you've come when you're in that pit. Tackle your PND, get support, get better.

PND isn't an ishoo, it's a medical condition, so you should try to get that sorted via the GP.

But - I am also 32 and far from the sane, stable, zen-like person I aspired to be. But one thing I have realised is that aspiring to perfection is a bit destructive, really. I now have a bit more of a sense of humour about myself and can laugh at myself when I am being an unreasonable arse. I don't take myself and my ishoos as seriously as I used to, and I think that helps.

Also, I found some diaries from my early 20s, and they did make me realise that I have come on a long way. I used to be a reeeeal loon!

I thought I would go to university when I was 30, as a well-funded mature student. Nobody warned me that, beginning with Thatcher's Tories in the '80s, the chances of doing that would be taken away.

Seriously? I'll be 40 in a few weeks. We bought our house less than a year ago and now have a mortgage and bills to pay. My dh is in a crap job that is very low paid, but he has no ambitions to go elsewhere and indeed there is nothing else he can do, he's 46.

I started as a self-employed copywriter 3 years ago. Sometimes I get £250 a week and sometimes I get £100 a week.

We can only afford one cheap holiday a year and hardly ever eat out. Our weekends are a DVD from LoveFilm and a bottle of wine.

I don't feel that I've achieved all my goals or my ambitions. I have friends younger than me who have settled down on a fantastic career with good pay and have lovely houses in safe, friendly areas. We have an ex-council house.

So quit moaning, because life is what you make of it and trust me, it could be much much worse.

I'm on prozac for the pnd so I am trying to tackle that. Thank you for the kind words although rhubarb telling me to "quit moaning" took me aback. I wasn't meaning to moan just kind of express how I felt and see if anyone else felt the same.

Because sometimes we all need a kick up the arse to make us appreciate what we have.

Yeah, I've been there too, in that black hole with depression wondering how my life got to this point, wondering what was the point of Uni and why I couldn't have married someone with ambition or blaming myself for perhaps not trying hard enough. Yet I've got two lovely kids, a dh who loves and respects me and my own house, which is more than some people have. And someone telling you to quit moaning isn't doing so to be mean, they are doing so to virtually take you by the shoulders and give you a shake whilst telling you to look around at what you have, instead of concentrating on what you don't.

Feel for you, doorbell. You sound a bit like me before I got help. I got to the stage where I felt everyone would be better off without me. Finally I got the help I needed - in my case it was Citalopram.

OldMumsy speaks a lot of sense. Think if you have been on the prozac for a while you might want to have a chat with your GP/Practice Nurse, to see if there is something more suitable or you are on the right dose. In the meantime, just focus on each day. As your children get older, your horizons will widen again.

I think when you have very young children it's such an enormous transition from the world of work, where you are more goal-oriented. I didn't miss work so much as the regular feeling of achievement. Raising children isn't the same kind of work at all, and with babies and very young children it's often just bloody hard grind, unrewarding and thankless. I would often feel like a skivvy, and wonder what the hell happened to "me" the day my daughter was born.

It got better for me, and I'm sure it will for you too. Also, please don't worry about your children, they will be fine. The fact that you are worried about any effect on them means you are already protecting them.

Rhubarb, depression is not the same as just feeling a bit down and sorry for yourself. It doesn't help people to tell them to "quit moaning" and that "life could be much worse".

Did I not say that I suffered depression? I had ante-natal depression and I still get bouts of severe depression.

Being reminded of what I had helped me, but if it doesn't help the OP then I'll shut up and go away. I did honestly post hoping to help and I apologise if I didn't, but please don't twist my words and make my intentions to be mean and hurtful as that was the last thing I wanted. My dh can be quite cruel to me when I'm down, but actually it does work and me getting angry at him helps to distract me from the "oh woe is me" phase I can get into.

I'm 30, single, childless, completely broke, live in a tiny flat with no furniture, live off whatever I can find and have a boring job. But you know what? I'm happy. I've got friends, hobbies, interests. I think that's what counts in life. Don't niggle pick at things, just accept your lot and get on with it.

I find the idea of having my life "sorted" really depressing.

What kind of shit life would you have after it was all sorted?

Maybe, if you're lucky, you have sufficient warning at a ripe old age to get your affairs sorted just before you die.

Yes, Rhubarb, I did note you said you had suffered from depression. In fact you rather gave the impression that it is unresolved, so I am not surprised at your 14.15 post. But that's no excuse for treating OP's feelings with such callous disregard. This is not a competition to find the person who is most deserving of their clinical depression.

cumbria81 Good for you. And what on earth has that got to do with anything? "Don't niggle and pick at things, just accept your lot and get on with it". I guess you really have no idea how useless and banal that advice is.

Do you mean you thought you might have grown up by 30? Grown up in terms of being a sort of calm, wise, assertive person? So did I, but I've come to realise that I probably never will, and that most people don't grow up ever - they just get more like themselves. The main thing is to be aware of it, I suppose, and question your knee-jerk responses to things - which I do, but that doesn't seem to stop me reacting the same way next time.

Sorry to hear about the PND. That surely can't help - no doubt you feel pretty unsorted right now, but at least try to have faith that you won't feel like this forever.

Being passive-aggressive and sarcastic are just symptoms of something - they are the way we react when certain factors are in our emotional lives. Both are defence mechanisms of a kind. I think sometimes they are a way of keeping control of a situation, remaining untouched and above it all.

I wonder if you can detach yourself from the things that make you behave like that, try not to react, have an air of calm about you, let things wash over you. If you can try that for, say a week, and see what happens around you when you do that, it may help you see the wood from the trees a little bit.

Delete the aggressive and the sacrasm, allow the passive but focus on your inner strength perhaps?

Remember that everyone can change, it's never too late.

DBR, it is very hard to give advice on situations like this because everyone is different. It sounds to me like you have various traits that you consider to be flaws (as we all have) and that you currently have PND but have not mentioned a prior history of depression.

My advice would be not to delve too deeply into thinking about your life and your character at the current time. You are depressed and so are going to have a very skewed view of yourself and your life at the moment. I would focus on getting through the current situation and attempting to alleviate your depression. That might be very small things like having a bit of a routine to get you through the day, getting out and getting fresh air and exercise, eating well, trying to sleep well, getting some supportive company and getting counselling.

Then when you are out of the depression, you will be able to think rather more clearly about your life and your character, and then think about making changes if they even need to be made.

olgaga, you are very rude. Perhaps you don't mean to be but you are. Different people offer different advice and not all of it will be right or what the OP is looking for. We can only work from our own experiences and what helped us as we are not the OP. Being so rude to posters on this thread is more insulting to the OP I think, esp as one of those people did apologise for her earlier comments.

You think I'm rude, Rhubarb?. The only reason I responded to you was the fact that you were so downright self-regarding, callous and rude yourself with your litany of woe topped off with "So quit moaning..." OP responded that she was taken aback by your comment, and clearly didn't find it helpful.

Regardless of her response you followed it up with the priceless "we all need a kick up the arse to make us appreciate what we have". It's irrelevant that you find "a kick up the arse" helpful, when OP had already indicated that she did not.

Now you are being confrontational towards me, and accused me of rudeness. I was not rude. I just had the temerity to point out how inappropriate and unhelpful your comments were, and how insensitive and unsympathetic you sound.

So, to put it your way, quit moaning!

Charming. Is that how you deal with people in real life I wonder?

Sorry OP that your thread has been hijacked in this way. I wish you all the very best and hope that things improve soon. I have a page on my blog that lists ways in which I deal with my depression and perhaps that might help more than my comments have done today? I'm sure olgaga and myself would have no objections to your asking for these unhelpful contributions to be deleted so that you can receive some supportive advice.