To feel an overwhelming sense of sadness and despair because I'm old?

[MelAncoly]

I don't know what's wrong with me. I hate my job and it's stressing me out. I'm working 6 days a week and I'm exhausted. On the surface we look fine, own home, money in bank etc but for the past few months I've started to feel like running away and starting again. I'm terrified almost.

Today, on my way to work i had a flashback to being 16 and having an old man trying to persuade me to have sex with him (I didn't). Slowly as the day has gone on I have began to feel almost despair at my lost youth. All those years, my late teens and 20s were absolutely shit and now they're gone forever. My husband was previously married for 15 years before we met. His 20s were full of married life - he was young, fit and healthy - I've missed that part of him - a whole lifetime of him.
I'm sat in my car at work trying to pull myself together because the way I feel - I could quite easily just drive off into the distance and never come back. I was at ds's open day at uni a few weeks ago and he was looking into accommodation. I was so excited for me but a small part of me wanted to cry. My whole teens and early 20s were wasted and I've missed out on all that.

Quite honestly, I feel like I want to disappear. Today.

How old are you?

I'm 35. Yes I know that sounds young but I feel like I've fucked up so much. This feeling has come on all of a sudden and it's overwhelming and terrifying. I feel unstable.

Of course YANBU, at all.
We all feel what we feel

But, you do sound very down.
How long have you felt as bad as that about everything?

Regrets are one thing (don't we all have them?), but dwelling on it and allowing past events to suck your enjoyment of what you have just now sounds not a very healthy way of thinking about your life.

None of us can go back and change things, not one of us.

Acknowledge what went wrong and feel regret - but then let go of it.
Look forward, not back.
You say you hate your job - what can you do about that?

Do you think you might be depressed?
Depression is more than just being sad, it is all joy being sucked out of everything, losing the ability to enjoy something, feeling flat, memory/concentration/sleep/appetite/libido can all be affected.

It's been slowly coming on over the past few months but today it has just hit me like a brick.

I've been to doctors with lethargy, loss of appetite and insomnia. She's looking down the lines of anxiety/depression but since I last saw her I have been getting chest pains and my mood is so unstable. Yesterday I felt full of energy and rushed out and bought a £300 vacuum cleaner for no real reason. DH not happy. Today I feel total opposite. So unstable and confusing.

Sorry you feel that way Mel. All of the shit you went thru made you the person you are and the person your husband loves, and you have at least 50 years left to live a life you will be proud of. Maybe see if you can get some CBT? I found mine really helpful just as a way to get stuff off my chest.

Go back to your GP.

If your mood is as up and down as that it would not be unreasonable to look at a specialist assessment.

Mel, even the most sorted and capable people (not me) make mistakes. If you know the mistakes you are on the way tomavoiding them in the future. The past can ruin the future if it is allowed to dominate through looking back instead of forward. Is there one aspect of your life you can tackle first? Just pick one for now, trying to tackle all the issues at once is not realistic. Might you be depressed? Do you have a good GP you could talk to? That could be your first step. If general fitness is a problem could you and your husband deal with that together. He is with you now, not the ex. Good luck

I turned 65 today and woke up at 3.30 am this morning to the thought that I am now REALLY old.
What I would say to you OP, is you cannot regret lost youth, it happened the way it happened, yes with hindsight none of us would make half the decisions we make during our lives but there is no going back only going forward and making the best of what life has given us.
Try and concentrate on the positives in your life, what you have achieved and the good things in your life
Good Luck you are very young you have a lot of life ahead of you, don't spend it thinking about the past.

I'm the same age as you OP, my 20's were full of mistakes (big ones and small ones), but my 30's have been much more stable, I think because I learnt from the mistakes I had made.

You can't go backwards, so I have just accepted I made some bad choices and did some things I'm not proud of and I'm trying to make now and the future count. My 20's helped form me as a person, so I try not to regret them too much.

I think you need to go back to the doctors and get some help to stabilise things for you.

I am with you there, but 45.

I wish I could just get the courage to jump off a really tall bridge into the deep sea never to be seen again. But I know I have to wait at least 15 /17 years to do that, when my kids are much older.

Life was good, youth was lovely. The thought it is never coming back, or the same type of happiness and carefree lifestyle never again achievable is breathtakingly painful.

Life should be about more than just steering your kids to adulthood and then waiting to see if I will be a gran or MIL and get a part in their lives. Life should be about experiences, and good time, community, respect and fulfillment. When it is none of that, it seem pointless.

Get back to your GP. Could they sign you off work for a couple of weeks? Maybe counselling would help too?
It's understandable to look back and have regrets, especially seeing a child start their journey into adulthood, but you are still young and perhaps need to reevaluate work, future plans etc.
The more time you waste on regrets is just more time being wasted.

Can you take vacuum back for a refund?

Anita, and anybody else feeling like that, i cannot tell you how much I disagree with you and that you are feeling like that, please seek help!

I am 50, I have a job, kids, elderly parents, a house, pets etc etc - I am loving life and am looking forward to many more adventures.
I know 80 year olds who are still taking on new challenges, exploring their world, learning new stuff and having a fab time. A lot depends on how well one is of course, physically AND mentally.
And of course age means that certain things won't ever be possible again (I had to accept some time ago that I was never going to be an Olympic gymnast ), but seriously doom and gloom because you are whatever age is not right and not healthy and not inevitable.

Please seek help.

I'm so sorry you're feeling bad. I think sometimes we hit places in life where the past threatens to overwhelm us, particularly if it's been traumatic and difficult. There is a kind of pain that you carry with you from bad events, and sometimes when things get out of kilter it's like a flooding river - the water keeps rising and it feels like there is nowhere to go.

I am here to tell you that it can and will get better. The hurt you feel that seems to be drowning you can subside and there is sunshine and greenness in the future. However, sometimes it's not as simple as letting go of regrets - I honestly think there are some emotional tasks that involve thinking outside of habitual/normal patterns that are virtually impossible to do by ourselves. I would urge you - really urge you to speak to someone about how you are feeling. I'm seeing a counsellor at the moment for all kinds of bad things that happened in my own past, and it's been transformative at creating space and room for me to breathe, assess and go forward with new positivity. It's a lot of money, but it's far more worth it than anything else I buy - including a £300 vacuum cleaner!! So I would make your first step taking the hoover back, getting a refund, and looking online for someone you can speak to. If you find someone you properly click with, it will be far more worth it than a cleaner carpet.

Children going off to university is one of those times where lots of people feel bad about the choices they made and the chances they missed out on. Would you be interested in getting a degree yourself? There are options like the OU, or you could apply as a mature student ( via an access course of necessary). Or perhaps do some sort of training course for a job that would be more fulfilling?
If you have medical issues then they need to be investigated, but you could also try to turn things round by looking at what you can do now to make things better. Turning 40 hit me much harder than I'd expected and I was overwhelmed at the sense of loss of my youth. It took me a couple of years to work through it (because I'm stubborn and secretive and hate asking for help) but now I am more able to see chances rather than problems.

OP
Just going to put some thoughts here in case they are useful
In my 30s I regretted a lot of things. I tried to talk to people about it but in this horrible relentless positive thinking culture, I was told I shouldn't regret things!! Gah. Some days I just quietly sing Eddie Money "I wanna go back" and oddly it made me feel better.

At 40 I don't feel those pains at all really and I read that it's often a turning point where you stop thinking what could have been. My life is good. It isn't what I'd wished for but its good.

Job is key, what are the options there? Also do follow up with your doc.

I've been there OP. Spent 10 years in an unhappy relationship, where my confidence and self-esteem were next to nothing. I wanted marriage and children, he didn't. I went along with him because I thought I loved him. During this time, I was also running a business that left me in a lot of debt. I started to have panic attacks and negative thought cycles, it was dreadful.
Then one day, aged 37, I packed a bag and went to stay with my sister, closed the business and got a regular job paying minimum wage. I decided to go for some counselling and it really helped.
Leaving all of the baggage behind (well, nearly, still paying off the debt!), I started to feel a lot better. I did things for me again - dance classes, joined a band, started to feel life wasn't all about work and making money.
I'm now 41 and have met and married a lovely man who dotes on me, I have a good job, which pays well but also gives me time to be me, and I'm pregnant with the the child I've always wanted.
A few years ago. I thought 41 was ancient. It's not, it's just another chapter in my life and a much better one than my 30s was.
I hope you get support from your GP, but there are other organisations who can help. My local CAB put me in touch with someone, and there are also private counsellors.
Very best wishes.

Well, I have a house, and I have elderly parents, close to 90 and all the joy that brings, with stroke disability and dementia. That cant last for ever for sure. I have one sibling, we are not in touch much, she lives far away. I dont have a job, tried to find work, and have had no luck despite a couple of degrees and work experience. My health is no great, and I dont have a supportive husband, I have a selfish egocentric man who generally just see his own perspective, and he is working away monday till friday leaving me alone to deal with house and kids. There is so much in my life that could be better, but I dont see how I can change it. If I found a job, maybe the husband did not have to come home at all at the weekend. I think my love for him is opposite proportional to his respect for me. There is no help to seek, or nothing that tablets can fix for me!

I do have friends though. Good friends, I have two groups of 3 women I meet regularly for food and catchup, and other friends too. So I am lucky that I have at least 10 good female friends that I socialize with. And great kids. And a house. So it is not all bad. I just dont want to live to be old, and needing care. I hope I find a way to end it before I become a burden.

Seriously look at your job.

I was so miserable by the end of my last job, it was making me really ill.

I just felt so lethargic about everything and interested in nothing. I also lost loads of self-confidence cos I felt like I as rubbish at everything.

I saw the Dr, got put on anti-depressants, got a new job and now I feel loads better. Still not jumping around with happiness, but more content with my family. The current job isn't amazing, but is so much better than what I had.

Go back to your GP. Make sure all the physical causes have been ruled out like thyroid, anaemia, low vit b12. It may be that a course of anti-depressents will lift the fog of how you feel enough that you can work out how to deal with your regrets about the past.

Why do you hate your job? Is it the specific job, the people? How easy would it be to change it?

Rationally - clearly you are not old. Clearly you could go and do whatever you long for at any point over the next 40 years - gap years for seniors are becoming a thing. You are young enough to retrain, to go and study, to travel, to change your life completely if you want to, and you say that financially you are doing ok.

All of that however is irrelevant as clearly your mental health is not good at the moment. You need to go back to the GP and insist upon some support.

Once you are stable, your life has so many possibilities, but please don't try and 'struggle on'. What you are saying in your op is not the thinking of a healthy mind.

I would really recommend going back to your GP to explain how up and down you are. How one day you went out and impulse bought an expensive vacuum cleaner, then the day after you are so down you feel like you've been hit by a brick. I think it's unusual to feel such extremes of feeling on a day to day basis.

I hope your GP is able to help.

Feel similar and am also 35

See your GP and ask for more support.

When you feel able, make a list of random things you would like to achieve. There are some great free online courses on FutureLearn. Learn a new skill, visit some places you've always wanted to see. Join a class and very definitely look at ways to change your job.

My forties were brilliant. You are down but as above, accept regrets and focus on stuff you can change rather than the past which you cannot.

Mel
One thing that also happens when your mood is low is that it is easy to idealise other people's lives.

You talk about your DH's former married life at what he had in his 20's but what about the break up of his marriage - that must have been a bad time for him.
Other people's lives often look better from the outside than they were in reality. It might be that your 20's were shit but that having a shit time in your 20's is not so unusual.
This isn't a judgment it is a comment based on personal experience. One of my parents died when I was a teenager and for a long time I thought my childhood was much worse than anyone elses. Over the years I have found that quite a lot of people faced tough issues during their childhood or early adulthood and that many people have regrets and missteps over their earlier years.