Published on 12, July, 2020
I fool myself into believing I am a functional person---but I am not. All tasks involving my engagement with people seems to end in failure. Despite being married, that too has been an ongoing oppositional battle. We tolerate each other. I just had my 78th birthday and I am tired of leading this negative existance. Hassle just seems to find me. I'm not even sure my input now will be registered owing to a past NAS ID mixup I tried to sort out, but it too failed. So now I'm operating under a different ID which will be strange to any friends or followers I previously had engaged with.
I am really at a low point. Spilling out my guts to an anonymous crowd seems pointless to me. I don't really know why I started this thread. I initially thought I had found a home here, but that also went sour. I'm not looking for sympathy. I am clutching at straws trying to find my purpose while also trying to keep peace with my tortured soul.
From the outside, it seems to me that you are beating yourself up over having understandable difficulties. It would be like a doctor hating themselves because they weren't able to save a life. Doctors lose patients all the time. It's part of the job. Yet, we don't sit around hating them with terms like "dysfunctional" when they try their best and fail. Sometimes things are just unexpected, out of our control, or unresolveable. We have to accept our failures as lessons, not shortcoming or moral deficiencies. Like one of my favorite musicians said, "There were victims, and there were students." Meaning, either you see yourself as a victim without control and give up to fate, or you learn from the experience and continue moving forward building your path. Maybe if you were more open with your current difficulties on here, you could feel connected to others, receive helpful feedback, and gain insight to take the student path. I know it can be hard. I just took a 4 day vacation from everyone and everything because I was way to overwhelmed. However, every time I reconnect with my support, I'm happy I did.
In my case, I guess what I'm learning by sharing this is that I need to learn what is it the drives me away from it all, and figure out a way to better manage that pattern. From what I can tell right now, it's something in the area of a sense of inadequacy, lack of purpose, confusion, fear of upsetting others, and fear of others themselves.
We punish ourselves, all the time.