Hi folks, I'm back

I just can't see anything getting better - I can't see the *process* by how things will get better.

For example, if I was capable of having a career I'd have done it in my 20s. If I was capable of having a relationship I'd have done it in my 20s. The autism and depression which precluded those things have not gone away - in fact they have got much worse.

I have reached some kind of crisis point where I can no longer bear my life. The perception of the passing of time is relative - if you're in severe pain, even a minute can be torture.

I think maybe I am too depressing for this board and should stop posting. Sorry guys.

Hello Maranda,

So nice to see you post.

You will not like this, however I am going to challenge your negative thought loops.

You forgot to mention your brother, who you seem to get along with. May not see him very often, but if you needed him in a pinch or emergency, I bet he would be there for you. Or he would not have gone for a walk with you. Human nature.

You are not alone in the world, you have us here at healing well, and if you recall there were a number of us that were quite worried when you did not post for a length of time, and didn't tell us you would be taking a break. I am sure if you think about this, it will show that you are likable.

Self-compassion, as I have said before is an essential skill for those of us that feel this way. You have a double need for self-compassion, family issues with parents, most likely childhood issue and your health issues which you have accepted, but still effect your day to day life, as mine do.

We are not so different.

In Feb 2018 I caught my husband cheating on Valentines Day, darn Hallmark holiday. He willing moved out.
Back in 2012 all 14 blood relatives wrote me of off, denying the abuse and believing my brother that I was a drug addict.

Now, the in-law family has wrote me off, Italian wives do not throw husbands out. I am not Italian, but my husbands family is from northern Italy and it is just not done.

So, I am truly without any family. No one to buy presents for this year, no one to celebrate with, no one to cook for or bake for. All I have are my 2 dogs. and friends here at Healing Well and one on Insight Timer.

I do have acquaintances from support group, but like me they all have their stuff. Lunches every 3-4 months but nothing regular.

Yesterday would have been my 30th wedding Anniversary. Not one of them called or texted to see how I was doing.
Point being WE Have to take care of ourselves because no once else is going to do it. People are generally working on their stuff, we are all trying to survive.

But I want to do more than survive. I am tired of surviving, I want to live, enjoy the years I have left. I am 57.
So I work on self-compassion and it helps a lot! I have more better days than bad.
My chronic pain keeps me down, most afternoon and evenings, so I get up early to do things.
I work around my limitations.

My negative thoughts are so much like yours. Especially now. Why would someone love me? Of course he left me, what was I thinking all these years?
Well guess what? It was not my fault. I am a good person, likable and I have a lot to contribute. I am a good friend and I was great wife! He turned into an idiot.

You have beauty in you, all you have to do is slowly work to see it yourself. "If you want something to change, you have to change what you do"

I wish you peace and strength
Trina

Hi Trina.

I get on okay with my brother but he's not somebody I would rely on for either practical or emotional support. He's probably on the autism spectrum as well. He's always lived alone and never had a relationship. He's quite intelligent, but you wouldn't think it from where he is in life - 50 years old and still living in grotty bedsits, scraping a living from part time jobs. No matter how hard he tries, he can't get anything full time or permanent.

I am so sorry about your husband and his family. I imagine they have only heard his side of the story. Families are rarely neutral or fair, particularly in countries where there is a strong family culture. It's amazing what family members - particularly women of course - are expected to put up with, in order to maintain the family structure. Nobody should have to tolerate cheating or abuse, but there are many cultures where the women are expected to do just that.

I hope you can succeed in living and enjoying the years you have left. When our supposedly nearest and dearest let us down so badly, the least we deserve is some peace - but peace seems to be the hardest thing in the world to find.

@iPoop - The trouble with seeing a therapist is I would need far more than 5 sessions. My disability benefit runs out next February. I could reapply but I would almost certainly have to go through a lengthy appeal process again, which I don't know if I'm up to a second time. Without the disability payments, I couldn't afford a therapist at all.

I cannot see any disadvantages to having more money. It might not solve the problems I have, but it would give me more tools for dealing with them - unlimited therapy, holidays (I am so bored with the town I live in, words cannot express), etc. Living in poverty is miserable and stress-inducing to the extreme: I am not there yet, but millions of people in the UK are and I am but one step away from joining their ranks.

The self-dislike comes from an unconscious place I can't access usually. It began in childhood (early childhood from the sounds of it) and life has just reinforced it at every step of the way - I can't hold down a job, have a relationship, communicate with people, etc. etc. This is what I hope a therapist would be able to tackle, but it's so engrained by no I'm not sure if it's possible.

It seems to me that you are judging yourself against your perceived societal norms, and punishing yourself for not achieving them: for not living in a suburban house with a white-picket fence (that you struggle to afford despite your salary), with a husband (whom you criticize at every opportunity and whom doesn't listen/change in return), with 2.5-kids (who drive you absolutely batty), and a job (that bores/aggravates you to no end). What I'm getting at with the parenthesizes is that all of us in the end, struggle with depression and having more of those sorts of things only adds stress/worry to it all. Money doesn't really change that basic paradigm as "the wants" just get more expensive and more of them with more money. There's lots who on paper look like they are better off with higher salaries, but you begin to look at their expense ratio versus disposable income ratio, and realize why they carry so much credit card and other debt month-to-month and year-to-year. You can live beyond your means regardless of income. Not a "boo hoo" for the middle class, but more a "it's not very hard to struggle with monthly bills and carry debt even with multiple times the income" kinda thing which many of us can agree too (cost of medications, rent/groceries, etc kills us all and you wonder where it all went at the end of the month).

It's a round about way of saying: you feel alone but in the end you really are not alone as many feel the same. You are only "behind the 8-ball" if you convince yourself that you are. Otherwise you are ahead of it, should you chose to believe it. Easier to say but harder to implement, I know. But perhaps your goal post for being successful is set to ridiculous high standards and you're mercilessly beating yourself up due to it. But there's some of us who aren't married (and have no interest in ever being married), don't work due to our chronic illnesses (and do not feel bad about it), don't want kids, and do not weigh those things against ourselves/beat us up about it. You just march to the beat of your own drummer, and are dang proud of it. And maybe, just maybe, that's the mindset you need to try adopting.

Post Edited (iPoop) : 10/30/2018 8:29:17 AM (GMT-6)

Thank you folks!

I've got a cold atm. Had it for a few days; it started off quite mildly, but has got steadily worse :-/ Had to go to hospital today for an appointment. Was meant to have an Entyvio infusion after the appointment, but that's been put off 'til next week 'cos of the cold. Appointment was disappointing - my GI wasn't in, so I saw another doctor. Told him I wanted to switch biologics. He said he wasn't authorised to do that, so now I have to wait 2 months for another appointment with my GI (including an MRI scan in the meantime).

@nssg - I have thought about looking for a job, but I've been out of the job market for many years. I've got no skills to speak of; I don't have a viable CV. Moreover, any job I started I would *have* to be sure I could do for a long time - because once I give up my benefits it would be almost impossible to reclaim them again. Having a job feels like a pipe dream, like everything else.

@iPoop - Yeah, I get what you're saying. But it doesn't really help a lot. I'd much rather have been married and divorced than literally never been in a relationship at all. Children I'm not so bothered about - in a parallel universe I'd have liked one or two kids, but in this universe I'd have just screwed them up and risked passing on my terrible genes for depression, Crohn's, etc.

As for money, you don't *have* to saddle yourself with debt to fund a lifestyle you can't otherwise afford. I'm pretty sure that's not something I'd ever be tempted to do: I have always lived within my means. And, fortunately, the cost of medication is something I don't have even to think about. (That'll change after Brexit! Probably not immediately, but once the sharks have finished selling off the NHS to American companies, give it time...)

I'm starting to waffle now, because it's late and I'm getting tired. I never had much confidence and the little bit I had has been completely shattered - I trust myself to be able to make a cup of tea and not much else. I'm articulate enough in print but am a mess in reality. I mostly pass the time on Twitter and playing videgames - playing Super Mario 3D World on the 3DS atm.

@Karen - Thank you...

Okay, I'd better go to bed.... Goodnight folks >.>

Thanks Karen.

I went out with my mum yesterday. Had quite a nice time, although we were both suffering from a cold and feeling quite unwell. I took the car into a tyre place to get two new front tyres fitted.

Not done anything today so far. Tried to email my aunt about something, but the email failed to deliver. So now I'll either have to phone her or use Facebook to contact her. I don't know what I hate more: speaking on the phone or using Facebook :-(

Thanks Karen.

After a week, I'm finally over the worst of my cold. I tried to befriend my aunt on Facebook but she hasn't accepted me yet :-/ My surname is different (I didn't want to give Facebook my real surname), but she should still know it's me from the photo. I'll probably have to phone her up at this rate, gah.

Dogs seem to have a way of sensing things. I know they can tell when something is wrong. I am sorry about your friend's dog. I lost mine in May suddenly. . She was 8. I still have a hard time, but am getting a puppy in spring. Do you think your friend will get another? Sometimes it helps a lot. At first it is hard though. I would like to have another dog before I am too old to raise one. They become family members.

I am glad you are over the worst of your cold. It is going to start raining here on Sunday and will rain for a few days, then I think snow. Good "cold" weather. I guess I would rather have snow than cold rain. I think the colder it is, that it kills a lot of germs and such. I think, I don't know for sure.

I hope you have a good night. I am pretty much done for the day.
Hugs...

@cloudy - Thank you. Now if I only could like me :/

@Karen - Well I found out my friend thought her dog wasn't herself over the summer and she'd had other things wrong with her, so it wasn't quite as unexpected as I first thought. She was also 13, so quite old in dog years. I didn't ask if my friend if they would be getting another dog. They had two dogs - the one left is a guide dog.

Had my vedolizumab infusion today. There's nothing quite like hospital to make you feel even more alone when you don't have anybody.

I'd have been fine in a room by myself. It's being surrounded by other people which is the real killer.

How are you? Busy? Haven't seen you around

Thanks HT. Appreciated.

Update time I guess. I'm a bit braindead, so will keep it fairly short. I think. I never quite know how long a post is going to be until it's over.

Developed a bad cold which I've only recently gotten over. Colds are annoying but they have their advantages: for example you get to eat industrial quantities of blackcurrant Strepsils.

Moodwise, I've been up and down but overall there has been a noticeable improvement. I don't want to make a big deal of it though, because I'm not out of the woods by a long shot. And I don't want to boast about feeling better, only to fall back into the Pit of Suicidal Despair the next day. That would suck. But what has lifted, for now at least, is the constant, suffocating depression. I went through that for months. It was hell. There wasn't a spare minute when I didn't want to die.

I thought it would never end.

But then it did. There wasn't any 'Eureka' moment, except for perhaps one. I went through a stage of having several meltdowns - the last and worst of these took place one evening a week or so ago. If my neighbours were in, they probably thought I was bonkers, but as I wouldn't recognise them if I fell over them in the street, I'm not as concerned about that as I could be. It was gruelling and horrible, but afterwards I could sense that something had changed - for the first time, something inside my brain shifted. You lot know how obsessed I was over the summer - I wouldn't wish that on anybody. I really, seriously wouldn't. A hundred people could tell you a hundred reasons why the object of your obsession is not worth it, and it doesn't matter. Even if the logical part of your mind can see it, the unconscious and distinctly unlogical part takes over and makes it all-consuming. I didn't know how to counter that. I still don't in all honesty. I just did one thing which might have made the eventual difference, even though it made me feel worse for a long time afterwards: I took back control. I ended it. (It's a long story, one I don't feel like going into now.)

Now I just try to think about you-know-who as infrequently as possible and it has become much easier.

Phew. This post is getting longer and longer. What else? Mentioned the bad cold already. Well in new news, I've been given permission to keep a dog! That's nice. Now I'll spend the next 3 years agonising over what type of dog to get and whether it should be a puppy or a rescue dog (think I'm slightly favouring the rescue dog at the moment).

Aside from that nothing's really changed. I would like to take this moment to thank videogames though. It was videogames which got me through the worst summer of my life, even if I wasn't capable of really enjoying anything that I played. I've just started a brand new game, a sci-fi RPG called Xenoblade Chronicles and hopefully I will really enjoy that. It's got an immersive world, fights, quests, stats, collectibles and terrible voice acting - what's not to enjoy?

So anyway. Now I'm at a bit of a crosswords where I feel like I ought to pick a direction to go in. But I don't know what I want to do. I don't feel ready to take any drastic steps. Maybe I never will be capable of drastic change, given the general hell of the past few years. Have to wait and see.