And, should I change?
I’m 38 years old, single, not interested in starting a family (my mother was a drama queen and I couldn’t live that again with a partner or a child), don’t own any property, not really a consumerist person, I max my 401k and save 70% of my net income because most of the stuff society tells me to buy is irrelevant to me (I still own clothes I bought 20 years ago and they still fit me), don’t need a car and use a bike or public transportation, I prefer to cook at home because it’s cheaper and I can choose what I cook. I stopped drinking alcohol 10 years ago. I’m definitively not an extrovert.
I majored in philosophy because I liked it and I still do, but never found a job with my major. I tried being a high school teacher, but teenagers are way too much for me. Nursing, what I do now, is a versatile and safer job, even if I think it’s slowly killing me.
I feel cheated in life.
For 15 years I lived paycheck to paycheck paying off my debt, often having to move due to increased rent so this might be my way of coping with trauma. I still feel I’m way behind most people my age. I feel like a loser because I imagine them knowing better than me what they want in life.
It’s true that comparison is the thief of joy, but I cannot stop ruminating about this.
If you read my post history you’ll realize I don’t really care about my job, but stay because I need a paycheck and I like having a big rainy day fund. If I was a millionaire, I’d stop working. I don’t like any job.
It might be true that I’m autistic, because close human connections where never that important to me and most people I work with are not close to me, but as I’m nearing 40 I’m starting to think if my destiny is going to be to live and die alone in a nursing home. Sometimes this scares me, but I always go back to my apathetic, indifferent self, like I’m on some kind of drug that makes me not feel anything, neither good or bad, like my emotional brain is underdeveloped.
What I don’t want to be is this desperate loner craving for any kind of human attention turning to post his whole life online hoping a good Samaritan comes and saves me. First because it’s pathetic and secondly because that’s never a good foundation to build a friendship, I’d be inviting a predator, another crazy loner, a newborn Christian to save me with god, somebody trying to scam me with a MLM scheme or an antivaxer into my life. And I’m not a 20 year old discovering the world, I’m almost 40.
Every woman I’ve been attracted to has ignored me and every woman that showed an interest in me wasn’t good enough to me: she could be eager to make a connection, put an interest, even pretty and genuine but I cannot fake being in love or feeling attraction. I always ended up considering them as friends or acquaintances. I’m too old and too introverted (autistic?) to visit a club and try to impress a woman to go out with me.
I don’t think this is depression, depression would be me not going to work not even calling in sick.
It seems clear I need a friend, but I don’t know how to make friends anymore. I focused so much on surviving that I stopped caring about anyone else.
Psychedelics.
Yes they are not for everyone, but they sure as hell are for me.
You are sharing very deep observations about yourself.
About your mother and her impact on you wanting to start a family, take a look at raisedbynarcicissts communities or speak to a therapist.
For friends connection, try joining a board game club in your area. They really don’t care about autistic traits.
I’d recommend minimising the amount of commercial media you are viewing, and switch to mostly consuming open-licenced media for a while.
Audio books: librivox.org
Movies: vole.wtf/voleflix
Nursing, and care professions like teaching or ambulance drivers, can often be squeezed to rely on the compassion of the individuals in them. Do you have balance within your position. Is it time to retrain for something else at night-school? Or time to go to 3 or 4 days a week.
Take some pride, every single day nurses help people to stay alive.
The Stoic Reading app on FDroid may help you find some philosophy that motivates or solidifies a purpose.
Travel to a different town and meet random people, introduce yourself using your middle name. Invest nothing in making long term friends, just chat.
You actually sound quite aware of many things around you, finding opportunities for hobbies or artistic endeavours, where you do not overthink things, would help.
Remember that everyone is doing their best with what they know, and to let some things go.
All the best for your future.
The problem, as I see it, is: You are rotating around yourself. All the time. Round and round.
Humans are made for relationships. Not just man-woman, but relationships in the most general sense.
You are not living any strong relationships, and therefore your life feels meaningless.
So, the solution is: start to invest your time into people. Nursing wasn’t a bad start at all. But you do it for a job = for making money, so there’s not much coming back to you.
My advice is:
Do something for people in such a way that nothing comes back to you. I’m not talking about money, but your time. It does not need to be much. But do it very regularly. That way you will be able to escape that rotating around yourself.
You are going to meet new people, and there will be some wonderful people among them. Some others, too, but you are strong enough not to get scared off easily.
Nobody has a purpose in life. Belief that life has a purpose is a creationist delusion created to try and comprehend and apply order to what is intrinsically chaotic and random, and to fight the anxiety that their fears induce.
Your options are to choose one of the following:
- Acceptance. You can accept that life is meaningless and that it’s okay. This one’s my preference.
- Denial. You can deny life’s meaninglessness and seek to find or create a purpose for yourself. This can range from something as simple as a hobby to as life changing as having a family or advocating for a cause.
- Embrasure. Revel in the chaos and express yourself through it, doing whatever you want without thought it care. This is best exemplified by the fictional character of the Joker.
- Oppression. Take up religion to crush understanding of reality and replace it with a delusion of supernaturally defined purpose. This is probably the most commonly used option, frequently forced upon people during childhood.
- Opposition. Attempt to fight the reality or mask the effects of meaninglessness through other means, such as direct therapy, chemical dependency (not recommended), talking with friends/family, or through other methods not previously mentioned.
Understanding one’s place in the universe (insignificant, irrelevant, and temporary speck) is important to having an accurate impression of ones existence. Whether one can accept that and what one do with that understanding is unique to the individual.
I hope that helps - good luck.
This, so much. You majored in philosophy, you know more about absurdism than I do. You also know there’s no such thing as “being ahead” or “being behind” in life, just being closer or further to your own values.
You’ve got an approximate 30-40 years of good cognition and physical ability left, and soon after you’ll die and nothing will have mattered anyway. “Existed safely until s/he died” is one possible path to take, but it sounds like you want permission to stop being scared. Go for it, the world doesn’t care.
Hidden Brain had a good episode “Why You Feel Empty” Aug. 6, 2024. “We all know what it feels like to be sad” … “We also know what it feels like to be joyful and happy” … “Sociologist Corey Keyes says lots of us live in an emotional netherworld that falls between these two poles, we are not depressed but still feel unfulfilled.” Anyway, I saved it cause it stuck with me because I’ve been languishing for a while as well. Give it a listen let me know what you think.
