Sometimes I wonder if I'd have been better off sticking to video games, alcohol and other distractions. For someone at this point in life self improvement can worsen depression by drawing attention to everything that's already been missed.
What has this actually got me other than putting off of chronic health conditions for a few more years. Plenty more time to look back with regrets I guess while I'm surrounded by the young people. There's a world of difference between early 30s and 40s.
I've been thinking about similar things lately.
As a kid, it didn't bother me as much that I wasn't "cool"/"popular". I mean, I didn't love it, I felt insulted and humiliated that I wasn't considered "cool" and I felt like it was ******** that others were considered "better" than me, just because of the dumb luck of the bodies, brains, and money they were born with. But I thought women just like ******** when they're younger, just like guys just like hot girls when they're younger. And I thought they would grow out of it, and I thought I would become a professional because I was slightly above average at school which I thought meant I was a "smart person", and one day the knowledge would just "click", I would just "know" what to say and do to get someone to like me. That, or someone would just like me randomly. I thought the stuff that made people attractive back in high school, would stop mattering, and that eventually someone actually would like me because I was nice, because it would be a breath of fresh air from all the fake, corny guys putting on an act trying to be "cool". Either way I wasn't worried because I thought the problem would solve itself on its own. Some guys were lucky and got it naturally right away, but I felt like I was one of those who just had to wait my turn. I
didn't think I was out altogether, just that I had to wait longer than "the cool guys". But again, while I didn't love it, I still didn't feel like it was that bad, because "waiting" isn't "never", and I thought most people don't know what they're doing at a young age anyway, that these relationships were just based on shallow things like looks and money, and
not personality, and that they weren't even real relationships. I thought I shouldn't worry about it anyway, I should just have focused on schoolwork and enjoying being a kid while I still was one, and all the things I liked back then. I thought I could worry about *** and relationships later, after I grew up, after I finished the path of "stay in school, stay out of trouble, get good grades, go to college, get a professional job". I didn't realize that following that path could leave me with "no personality" which would leave me stuck in singledom, and I didn't understand what was really meant by "personality" when people said that eventually personality would matter more than looks, when we all grew up.
It also didn't bother me as much that I wasn't good at anything. I thought it was just another interest like anything else. I thought sure, it's nice to have, but I thought it was an extra. I didn't know that it was basically a requirement. I thought I just wasn't born with the right genes to be good at anything, but I wasn't bothered by it because I thought I just had different interests so I didn't think it really mattered. And also, I used to think that I would be OK with just being a fan of things that other people were doing, but not doing anything myself. Now I realize that being good at something is exactly what a guy is supposed to do, that being active at something, doing something instead of just liking things that other people make or do, is a big part of what gives you a masculine identity, especially if you aren't macho. And that if I don't, it's like I'll have no life, no personality, like there won't even be much of a "me", like I'll have been some kind of machine or zombie - and I'm still afraid I can't do it because I worry I wasn't born with the right genes to have potential at anything.
Both of these realizations - that attraction will not work out on its own, and that I have to be good at something to be interesting and attractive, and I don't know if it's even possible for me - mean that I can't just blissfully tune the world out anymore. I was just thinking the other day that as a kid I used to daydream about Star Wars all the time, I used to have all these battles between Jedi and Sith, X-Wings and TIE Fighters in my head while the other kids were playing sports, doing various art forms, doing the things that I thought I couldn't do because I thought I wasn't born with it. And I thought of fandom stuff, while other kids worried about popularity and attraction - again, out of thinking there's nothing I can do, I'm not the right kind of person, I have to wait. But I haven't done that in a long time. I still like the fandoms that I used to, but I can't get lost in it, immersed in it like it used to. It doesn't make up for not having a life, like it used to, because I no longer feel like my problems will work out on my own if I just wait, and I've realized how important being good at something is, that it's not optional like I thought it was, but that I still don't know if I can do it.
Alcohol still works. If I drink enough, I get numb, and I don't care about anything except the next drink. But I always come back down to reality eventually. I know it's not much of an answer. Also what keeps me from just diving into alcohol is that it makes you gain weight, and I put a lot of time and effort into losing the weight I lost in these last three years or so, and I'd hate for it to have been all for nothing.
Basically, yeah. Just wanted to say I relate.