AIBU to grieve the life I feel I might have had?

[OnceMoreIntoTheBreachDearFriends]

Just looking for some advice on how to get over mourning the life I feel I should have had.

For context, I had an awful childhood, including an alcoholic abusive father who died when I was young, and an emotionally unavailable mother who liked to throw material things at me to make up for it. I was bullied all my life including in first jobs, I suspect due to being autistic which I didn’t know until I was 35. Despite all of this I was the classic overachiever, identified for a glittering career from when I was a small child (suggestions as far back as primary school included a brain surgeon or the prime minister 😂)

But sadly an abusive relationship in my 20s and significant mental health issues due to life events put paid to that. I’m 40 now, I have an NHS middle management role, my own home, nice holidays etc but I put in an incredible amount of hours over two jobs to be able to afford it. Single after a string of failed relationships, no kids. I just feel like I’ve missed the boat in terms of potential…

I’m on holiday at the moment in a fairly upmarket resort and spent the evening a few nights ago talking/drinking with a group in their late 20s who all worked in the city, flats in Chelsea, etc. Oxbridge educated (I have a degree and masters from an RG uni but I could have gotten into either of them). I just now look back and think - I could have done that - but my circumstances held me back, I wanted to do a grad scheme and move to London but my ex held me back and I got a mortgage instead.

I know it’s too late to change it all now - I don’t have the transferable skills and certainly couldn’t afford more than a house share in the south (and that’s impossible for me to do). I know comparison is the thief of joy but I could just do with some advice on how to get over it. I just feel like I’ve missed out so much
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Are you actually fucking joking? Seriously?

OP, depression is in the past, anxiety is in the future. You probably know this if you've had a lot of therapy

Never heard that before and I've had depression, anxiety and therapy. Thought provoking.

No one is trying to upset you, people are sharing experiences to give you perspective.

The cesspit of mumsnet is absent here.

Seriously no one can answer you in a way that will help you.

Your current thought patterns are unreasonable, and you are angry about people with worse stories.

I think you need someone who can actually help you alter your thinking, medically or through therapy. This is not helping you, it’s making you angry.

No. People are trying to minimise my experiences by telling me that I can’t have possibly have had the worst start of anyone I know, or that what I experienced can’t be that bad because people don’t have food or water.

do you all go on threads about cheating husbands and go well MY friends husband DIED so you avoiding be thankful you’ve got a cheating one. Actually you probably do

I mentioned clean drinking water to give you some perspective. You said you had it harder than most and I disagreed.

You want to change how you feel about life? You have to be prepared to think differently.

On hard days I try and focus on how insanely lucky I am. Sometimes that’s literally me looking at my dog and cats and thinking how wild it is that I get to live with these adorable furry creatures. Like when Buddy in Elf says “ Good news! I saw a dog today.”
I feel that deeply because there are days when looking at a plant has been enough for me to feel
hopeful.

It’ll take work but if you want to change your thoughts you have to be willing to see the good too.

I have to agree OP. It's been a pile on and I'm sorry you've experienced it.

MN can be a horror show at times.

As an autistic person you are suffering from a very common experience of knowing you were gifted and knowing you had so much potential but because of the legacy of both your parents who were quite possibly ND you had a difficult parental relationship which trained you into a shit relationship with partners.

Do you follow Spectrumy on Facebook. You might find her older posts interesting.

We become the story that we tell ourselves OP. Perhaps you could work on your story. Instead of "I missed out, Im sad. you could be "You are a survivor. A hero. Someone who should be immensly proud of themselves". Theres' a good app called Aura which has some wonderful stuff on there to help change your thinking. There's a 2 week trial. I'm having therapy myself but I've found Aura pretty good. you have to go deep sea fishing, looking for the good ones but it's worth it when you find a good one.

It sounds like OP has dealt with at least 6 things from your list. One thing at a time is bad enough. I do think it's disingenuous to say something along the lines of "everyone has struggles". It's not irrelevant because all the studies show that childhood trauma impacts people for the rest of their lives. You can't just magic the pain away. It takes major therapy and a lot of people struggle to get to the contentment stage. The majority of Britain's population has not gone through several major traumas in life let's be fair so it would make sense to look at a normal person and think "god I wish I had that one bad life experience instead of my 6 shit life experiences".

Most posters on MN are trying to give their children the best possible lives ever. No smacking, stranger danger to the max, pushing tutoring. Being told you're the best whatever mistakes you make. Then on the flip side imagine growing up before the Internet, being abused and neglected and having no one to turn to for help. Not even realising your childhood was weird until well into adulthood. The rift between the haves and have nots in emotional care is huge and it's hard to understand if you haven't experienced it.

Some of the accounts of people who grew up with addicts and suffered major neglect and sexual abuse make me grateful for my terrible childhood. I know people have had it worse but I also know people had it much easier. I used to feel like op but now I'm just in the "getting through life, drama and stress free" phase. My childhood sucked but my adulthood will be peaceful as possible.

I think it’s understandable that you feel that way, considering everything that’s happened to you.

However, I don’t think it does you any good to think that way. You have to think positively about the things you have, or you’ll just drive yourself mad, and ruin the life you’ve made for yourself.

Find where your local Priory hospital/anxiety treatment centre is. There are some really good therapists there. The best are at Roehampton IMHO. I thoroughly recommend that place, life-changing for me.

Sharing like experiences is a way of connecting with people, not belittling them. You are asking if you are reasonable to think that you should have had a better life? It’s perfectly reasonable for people to say - yes - but this is my experience. And that experience might be better or worse.

Most people are comforted by this, you aren’t, you are annoyed that the focus is being taken from you on a public forum.

I’m taking time to say that you cannot get what you want here, not to say anything to try and upset you. You clearly have a lot of anger and mumsnet isn’t the place to ease this.

No, but people do share their own experiences, and how they coped and moved on.

“my husband cheated too and did xyz, here’s what i did and how I think about it now”

Thats exactly what people have done here, it’s exactly what you asked for, but you don’t actually want to hear it.

It’s pretty rare that the OP comes back and goes “WELL, I KNOW I ASKED FOR ADVICE TO CHANGE MY MINDSET BUT I DIDNT WANT TO HEAR ANY OF YOUR SHIT, ONLY MINE!!! - DONT MAKE ME CHANGE MY MIND!!!!! YOURE MINIMISING ME!!!!’

I feel like knowing everyone has a story that would break your heart makes the human experience so much less lonely.

We all have feelings of anger, shame, disappointment. We all have been the villains and the hero’s.

Human experiences are far more similar than most of us think.

I am mentally very well now, thank you, but I just thought that comment was interesting..

I used to feel the same, didn't make the most of early potential. I asked my (very supportive and lovely, sadly now passed) dad whether he regretted that I hadn't made the most of my early potential. He said no, because I wouldn't be the person I am now. Makes me well up to think about it. He was a man of few words.

You wouldn't be the person you are now if you had done things differently and you sound like a lovely well-rounded person. Hold on to that.

It absolutely isn’t. there are so many posts implying I should count myself lucky because I haven’t died from cancer and I’ve got food and water etc etc etc.

its not showing empathy by relating their experiences, its trying to minimise mine. Some people commit suicide for a hell of a lot less than I have come through the other side of

i totally agree with all of this so apologies if I was appearing dismissive. I am not someone that would say “we all have problems” to someone going through a difficult time.

But to be clear, I do think there is a difference between “why is my mental health bad?” which I feel like I would’ve answered more in line with what you’ve said and “why am I not more successful?” which is what I was trying to look at. And I know both can be and are often interlinked but I do think it doesn’t hurt to accept that there are a zillion reasons to not be where you think you could have been. I personally find it quite liberating to remember that there are so many circumstantial reasons for why someone is and isn’t “successful” and that we shouldn’t congratulate or berate ourselves too much in this regard.

YANBU. I feel that I have a lot of wasted potential as well. I have a very high IQ and was tipped for greatness, but I work a pretty mediocre job and am not as wealthy as Id like to be (I won't lie, I get livid when I see people like the worthless flabby vapid Kardashians rolling in money!) I am getting less bitter as I get older, but I do feel you.

You’re 40. Not dead. Change things.

I was not trying to dismiss your trauma but you admit your way of handling it is not serving you. You want to change yes?

Having perspective, gratitude, and a positive mindset is how you do that.

I’ve had trauma, I’ve lost people to trauma, and I’ve been fortunate to know people who have moved gracefully through horrific trauma.

I have faked it until I made it through my own trauma. None of it’s easy but I’m confused if you really want advice or what sort of advice you’re looking for?

OP please focus on what you can change now.

If this thread is not helpful you can have it deleted.

I don't want to minimise your unhappiness.

But do focus on where things can go better in the future for you.

Dear OP
You are totally justified in hating the hand life dealt you. In fact, i think I can see rage and bitterness in your posts, and I can understand why.

How to deal with it? Well, you have a choice: you can either continue to see your energy eaten up by anger and resentment, or you can decide that you still have time to use this energy to build the kind of life you would like.

Personally, I am not sure that I would want the life of a 20-something professional in Chelsea, and all that glitters is not gold in any case.

But i would say that you need to focus on identifying what exactly you feel you are missing, then think about how you could achieve it albeit perhaps in a different way? Is it prestige, social standing, respect, fame, money, job satisfaction, friends, exciting social life, or simply a very well paid job and a very comfortable lifestyle? Only you know.

One thing I can say is that you probably have another 30-40 years ahead of you. You have done really well with what you have achieved so far in the face if sych challenges. Now you can build on that by planning out what you want to do next.

If you don't grasp the bull by the horns now, you may well spend the rest of your life loaded with anger and bitterness. The choice is yours. In the past, there were points when you had choices and you now regret the choices you made. Identify the opportunities you have now (because there are opportunities out there, even if grasping them might be a lengthy process). Visualise the life you want in say, 20 years, work out what the components are, and actively choose to start the process of working towards that life. You may get there fully or you may not. But the alternative of expending so much energy on continued bitterness and anger is pretty grim. It's up to you which road you choose.

I am in my early 60s now. I have not have had the awful experiences you have, but I did have inadequate parents and poverty when I was a child. I was also a child tipped for the top and was the first in my family to go to university, which was an achievement, but with better guidance and contacts (and family money) I might well have achieved much more than I have. It was easy to look back and blame other people and my circumstances but by the time I was in my mid 30s I realised that this was getting me nowhere and was actually harmful. So I made positive changes, not all of which were easy, and made things better. Now in my early 6Os, I don't regret the choices I made in my 30s even if they didnt all pay off. I developed a much clearer understanding of the things I wanted and valued, which for me were not money but things far more related to having work and voluntary work I am proud of doing, having built up skills and experiences which i can continue to build on to do more of the things I want to do, and a set of values which I try my best to live by. It is far from perfect but for me 'good enough' is also an achievement.

Good luck, OP. I hope you can put your talents and energy into things which will bring you fulfilment, whatever you feel these are for you.

Well of course you would. That’s a perfectly natural feeling. Sadly impossible though. So is it that you’re not so upset about what you haven’t achieved but more mourning that you had to face such adversity? That’s very normal and expected from someone with your experience. I’m sorry you went through those things. Do you just want people to acknowledge that you had a shit start and that start has affected how far you could achieve and that it’s unfair that your ambition and progress was stunted by shit people who treated you badly? Disadvantage is shown in statistics - of course an alcoholic parent, abusive parent, parental death, lack of educational support and an abusive partner held you back academically and financially. They would hold anyone back.

How do you get past it? Rant and rave and cry and grieve and speak the words of everything you think was denied to you and everything you wanted and then try and let go of all the anger and sadness and unfairness of it all. The other life doesn’t exist. Only this one does. Try not to waste it wishing.

Maybe try saying gratitudes every night. The brain is quite plastic and will follow the easiest thought pattern. You need to train it to go towards positivity.

I'll gladly give all my money (ironically none 😬😅) to not have a horrible movement disorder where my body parts moved in an involuntary way, with embarrassing things like my mouth opening up wide, or my tongue moves on its own, weird tic type symptoms, or how about having my mind's eye and imagination back after I lost it too... it made my life change for the worst, forever.

But i refuse to let it be me. And I will always say "keep on keeping on" and in truly hard times, my mantra has been "this too shall pass".

And I have seen many of your posts on many threads and you are one of the most uplifting and upbeat and thoughtful posters on here imo.