to feel I am damaged goods and have wasted my life?

[Wasteofspace1]

Really struggling with the passing of time and the feeling that I have wasted my life. I feel like I'm damaged goods, and that no amount of therapy or positive thinking will put things right in my life.

I'm in my 50's and have never fulfilled my career ambitions, not though lack of ability or opportunities, but I think through fear of failure.

I guess it all stems back to my childhood - had an emotionally abusive upbringing as a teenager, I was a sensitive and insecure child to start with, and then after my parent's divorce my father remarried and the old story, I didn't get on with his new wife, and at the age of 16 I was kicked out of the family home to live with elderly relatives.

Long story short, this all left me feeling desperately insecure and unhappy, and I think has been my over riding priority ever since. Rather than focus on my career after graduating from university, I was only interested and focused on finding a boyfriend who would "save" me. None of this was conscious, its just looking back on it now I realise why i behaved the way I did.

I always shied away from the career I truly wanted to succeed in, for fear of failure, and have always settled for less. After three children, I now work part time from home in a job that is related to the career I wanted to pursue. But I'm now 55 and every day I have that ghastly sick feeling that I have wasted my life and have not achieved anything like I wanted to. I feel that time is passing me by and it's too late to do anything about it.

This is all exacerbated by the fact that my husband and I are separated and my daughters are growing up fast (in their mid to late teens), and soon I will be faced with an empty nest. I am terrified of this prospect, and am becoming increasingly anxious about it. I feel such a failure, and desperately insecure once again. I feel I'm all washed up at 55, with no career, no partner, no financial security. I'm such a fucking waste of space.

How do I come to terms with the fact that I'll never be the person I wanted to be, and live with these terrible regrets?

Wow. Talk about "are you me"?! I'm the same age as you and going through the same thing. Although difference is I am morbidly obese, my"D"H is a manipulative narc and we cannot pay our mortgage so all those things are pressing down on me too. I do have a career, but stress and worry means I am failing in it, I have had, screwed up and left 3 jobs in 3 years. Also during that time my two best friends died, one at 49 and the other at 56. My own mum died when she was 54. I reckon I must be more of a mess than you ;) !

But this weekend I had a it of an epiphany, and I decided I was in fact living in the future, instead of the present. I am constantly worried about sorting everything out in a few years time, when in fact I have my children (same age as yours) now - they are here with me now and this is the only time I have with them at home, in a few years they will probably want to leave (in fact because of the mortgage situation we'll ALL be leaving in 8 years!) So I thought to myself, what can I do now to make things better now - and the main thing was to lose weight. Can you pick one thing you could do and as someone said earlier, make it a goal? Maybe making a plan about a new job?

I sat down on Sunday and wrote out what I'd like my life to look like in the future I worry about so much, and then how I would go about getting that life. There are some wonderful stories here amazing people, but be careful not to set yourself up to fail - maybe aim for one thing at a time.

I think your fear of failure is still holding you back reading your update.
You have your own unique personality and strengths which yiu are not seeing clearly as you are focused on external worth from others. Time to value yourself and learn self compassion.

I am incredibly happy with my life but it was not always so. I had a crisis approaching 30 as i had my kids young (18) and all my friends had gone onto careers and bought homes. At 32 I made the decision to go back and complete my degree. At 33 my life collapsed and I was diagnosed with several advanced autoimmune issues. I chipped away at it and finally completed my degree last year. This year, despites being crippled with pain I have don my MA. Next year I am hoping to do my PhD. I know I will need to take time out of uni at times. I may even have to take a year or two off at times. But I am trying. I am never going to have the exact career I wanted as it is too physically demanding but I tweaked my dreams and made them work for me, in the here and now.

I am now at the point where my kids are ready for leaving home and I can't wait for ME time. With no school runs or any of that stuff I can go on cheap holidays in term time and travel while I work from a hotel room or on the beach. I want to volunteer to teach English abroad in the future and can totally imagine doing that !

My nan used to say to me "If you do what you have always done, then you will get what you have always got". Be brave. Make a goal, break it down into steps and then see how you can make it happen.

Book a cheap flight to somewhere you have always wanted to go. Go. Think about the new you. Come back and activate the plan :)

Zap Now I think that is a real achievement, bringing up five kids singlehandedly, on a limited budget. And successfully carving out a happy life for yourself, now that those kids have left home.

We have never been loaded, but have always been comfortably off, and my husband was/is a pretty hands on Dad, so I always had him to rely on. Some posters on this thread - Baboc for one, have very kindly said that it's an achievement bringing up three children succesfully, but I guess that deep down I don't really agree - I just think that bringing up three kids in a conventional middle class household is pretty much every day life, and what most people do day in day out, not so much of an achievement, just life really. However, I take my hat off to single parents, I don't know how the hell they manage without going completely mad.

I'm not sure that my hormones have contributed to my current mental state upover though being perimenopausal/menopausal it's hard to say. I am on HRT though which keeps the dreaded sweats at bay!!

You have PLENTY of time!!! My friends mom had 4 kids and was a stay at home mom. When they finished high school she decided to follow her passion and went back to school to become a nurse and has an amazing career now! It's never too late to do what you want to do - and now that your kids are getting older you have so much freedom! It's time to start focusing on what makes YOU happy :)

My mother put off having a career until her last child was an adult - she was 55 when she started as a real estate agent. Before then she had worked on checkouts in supermarkets or cooked for children at childcare centres. But when she started her ‘career’ job she was so motivated to succeed she did extremely well. So well my dad retired. I am very proud of her. Don’t waste any time - follow your dream - it’s never too late.

So your mum and dad let you down.

But you didn’t let your kids down.

I’m approaching 50. I think we have to fake it to make it. It’s hard as all I want to do is enjoy my wonderful life. Oops! It’s not wonderful. No husband. Career gone to look after disabled child.

But we have 20 years of being fairly active and able. Let’s just grit our teeth, write down want we need, want, anything. Do one or two things. I identify strongly with your feelings. Let’s not give up!

orangecake123 yes, I do know what I want to do career wise, or at least I know what I would liked to have achieved, but that path is closed to me now. I've left it too late, and I'm too old and i have to accept that now. But that is what I'm really struggling with, the fact that I could have had the career I'd wanted if I'd only been brave enough to take advantage of the opportunities that were open to me at the time.

I don't want to retrain as an accountant or a basket weaver or a masseuse.

However, I realise there are other, non career goals I can focus on, such as my weight loss, which is going well, and OLD. Which is not. !!!

intotheblackhole sorry, I wasn't (I hope) being rude about SAHM, actually expressing admiration for those that try and relaunch their careers 15 years or so after giving it all up for their DC.

How did you get back into the workplace? Did you find it difficult?

Im a good 10 years younger OP but ive already made my plan for when the kids are going to leave home.
I plan in the next couple of years to go to college to retrain (this will fit in around my part time job). The studying/working/kids will be hard going but its not forever.
I plan to start at the bottom and work my way up, by the time the kids dessert me I should have experience and be earning enough to be relatively comfortable (not surviving on beans on toast, nothing lavish).
I think the trick is (for me anyway) is to have a good think about what you really want to do that is realistic for you THEN work out what route you need to take to achieve this.
For me, a man doesn't really come into the picture as we all know relationships can end and you can be left high and dry.

SofieMonde Sounds like a great plan, and one that I intend to put into action in the next couple of months!

Staplescorner sorry to hear you're struggling. The weight thing is just shit isn't it? But it's really really worth trying to get your head around it. I think what works for me was that I had a kind of epiphany too. I suddenly realised - duh, I can be quite slow!! - that I have a choice. I can choose to stuff myself stupid, and remain very fat and unhappy, or I can make changes, make better food choices, and slowly but surely my body will respond and I will lose weight. And the time will pass whichever course of action I follow. Six months will fly by regardless of whether you make an attempt to lose weight or not. Sounds like the bleeding obvious I know, but I find it really helps. And I'm so glad that I started, as I'm now a stone and a half less than I was at the beginning of the year. I've still got about three stone to go, but it's a bloody good start, and you CAN do it as well. Just take baby steps. And plan, plan plan. Forward planning is vital for successful weight loss I've realised. I plan my meals in advance, and my treats. And I plan on what days I'm going to drink alcohol and which I'm not. So then I don't find myself making bad decisions that I haven't thought through. Of course, sometimes I don't stick to my intentions, and fall off the wagon, but crucially, I ALWAYS get back on it again. I now realise that weight loss is not a simple journey from A to B, but a lifelong bloody battle, a marathon where you can never really take your eye off the ball, certainly not for too long. Or else you'll just pile it all back on again. Sad but true!

But your list making and planning all sounds very positive, let me know how you get on.

Trapped sounds like you've got it sorted. Well done, I wish I'd had the wisdom to think ahead. But I am where I am, so I need to make the best of things now.

Fanny you are an inspiration. I feel quite ashamed reading some of the threads on this post given the adversities such as ill health that some of you have battled to overcome. Really impressive that you have achieved so much despite your illness. Bloody well done!

Go and jump on a plane somewhere like SophieMonde said and have a good think about what you would like to do, you could have a good 30 years left being active/working (maybe not working) its like another phase of your life is going to start, could be very exciting!

OP, as I rapidly approach 50 I think these feelings in midlife are so common as to be, to all intents and purposes, normal. I also think they are independent of any objective measure of "success" - I know plenty of people who on paper are very successful career-wise (e.g. judge, QC, consultant surgeon, prizewinning novelist, headteacher) but who at this stage of life are feeling an emptiness - a sense of "what has it all been for?".

I think you are doing absolutely the right thing by acknowledging these feelings - they can inspire positive change (even little by little, as you are already doing), and a healthy creative attitude to taking charge of the next phase of your life. I made one small change at a low point a few years ago (joining my local community choir) and it has transformed my social life, renewed my passion for music and quite unexpectedly yielded a new relationship into the bargain.

Life is all about phases - read any biography or indeed obituary and it's amazing how many and varied are the "chapters" of an interesting life. Wishing you all the best for whatever your next phase is to be.

Here’s a plus if you are separated - you won’t end up devoting your retirement to being an unpaid career for a man. You can travel instead, or whatever you like.

Carer. Not career.

I'm a bit younger than you OP, but I recently spent 10 months p/t retraining in a specific type of therapy and started my own business (again). On the course I took, there were a number of women in their 50s retraining who have done the same.
What interests you? Not just from a 'work' perspective, but as a person? Walking? Making? Music? Singing?
I do think that sometimes we give so much of ourselves to our children, we forget during those years to look after ourselves and who we are. Maybe NOW is your time? Perhaps it's not so much an empty nest as you gaining time back to be yourself - your time to get it right. You'll have learned so much over these years without realising it. You're a different person now to the person you were when you were younger.
I agree with a PP who said don't set yourself up for failure.....start with small steps. What could you do this week to make things more as you want them? xx

In times such as thing, I think it's helpful to think 'what would Jane Fonda do?'. The woman is 80 years old and she is a power house. When she was 55, she had retired from acting but when she was 68 decided that was bollocks, returned to film making and then to the stage at the age of 72, earning a Tony nomination. She hadn't acted on stage in over 40 years.

She's continued to release exercise videos (claiming she can't do all the moves in her original hit, which I frankly do not believe ) and is the star of a major Netflix series with Lily Tomlin, aged 78. There is literally nothing this woman cannot do.

You're 55, we're all going to have to work until we are Fonda's age nowadays anyway, so this is merely the start of your second act. You're spending time regretting not having achieved your ambitions instead of getting on with achieving them. They're not delusions of grandeur - go and get what you want.

And bloody well done on the weight loss, that is a fantastic achievement. You can do this - you are doing it. Eyes front, forward march.

MissMildred yes you are right. There are loads of things that interest me that for some reason I have abandoned, (horse riding) or never pursued in the first place for whatever reason. I'm generally rubbish at joining things, have always been the one who watches from the outside looking in. But I'm slowly making adjustments in that respect, and fully intend to (literally) get back ontothe saddle again, when I have lost some more weight (that is not an excuse, but a genuine reason why I haven't ridden for a few years - don't think any horse would thank me if I tried to get aboard tipping the scales at over 15 stone!!!).

I don't want to retrain as an accountant or a basket weaver or a masseuse

However, I realise there are other, non career goals I can focus on, such as my weight loss, which is going well, and OLD. Which is not. !!!

The time is ripe for you to retrain at something you really care about - clearly not accountancy or basket weaving.

But you’re basically repeating here the pattern of your 20s whereby you decide to focus on dating and weight loss rather than your work.

You are rather making excuses that you could have trained for a particular career, but as you didn’t nothing else will do.

This ties you to the past. You’re a different person now. While that career may have been interesting it can’t be your only interest in life, surely? There are 100s of interesting worthwhile things that might take you in a completely different directions - if only you’d let go of the past and your obsession with the one particular career.

tribpot thanks for your encouraging words, in future I must channel my Inner Jane!! You are right though, age hasn't held her back in the slightest, she is a real inspiration.

And yes, rather than moaning and regretting what I haven't achieved, I must get on and start aiming for what I want.

Your post chimes with me also waste, I think it is common for women round our age. I had a childhood which wasn't ideal - young parents who had never been parented or loved much themselves - and I grew up way too fast. My regrets are similar and related to feeling like an imposter and not good enough, even though many people would consider my career as a success. I've never thought about what I actually wanted to do but have booked some life coaching so I can make a plan once my DC leaves home. It's exciting and terrifying all at the same time. The only way to view it is as a new chapter and do one thing at a time. If I think about being stuck in a job, single, lonely, overweight, approaching 50 I'd never get out of bed. So trying to weight first and then really think about what I want in my life - find it extraordinary that I don't really know! Hence life coach who I am hoping can coax something out of me. Good luck making plans