failure

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I only seem to come here when I feel bad. Sorry about that. I guess I want to moan somewhere, and I don't want to do it to people I know.
Not that I know what to type. I'm depressed and I despise myself for it. My life is good, I have everything I need and more, and a partner and child who love me so I have no reason to feel bad. Also, I'm way too old. I'm in my forties, I ought to be over this now. But maybe it's part because I'm in my forties and I still haven't gotten anywhere. I only work half a day per week now, as an assistant (read cleaner) to someone with a health problem. I've had many cleaning jobs in my life, and other jobs with low or no education request. I used to be the brightest kid in the class, year after year. And I was talented at drawing, and writing. Seems like such a waste, talents and intelligence and I did nothing with it, ever. I'm trying now, I'm doing courses at the Open University, but I know that even if I pass it won't get me a job. I'm just too crap at being human. I don't want to live anymore. I don't want to go on just to keep trying and failing.
I went to a couple of social meetings last week and it didn't go well. I talked to people, but I think I got it all wrong. Sometimes I have no idea what to say. And if I try to talk to more than one person it doesn't work. It always ends with them talking to each other and me saying nothing. I skipped the lecture of my Open University course yesterday because I couldn't face it. The first time I did go, but I got really tired and I didn't do well and didn't pick up a lot of what was said, and I didn't contribute to the discussion. I felt like a complete idiot.
I've been thinking about ways to kill myself and make it look like an accident so no one needs to feel guilty. I know I won't do it though. I'll just go on and live on as a useless stupid failure.

Well, I'm your junior by a couple of years, and I don't have a significant other or children, but what you're writing sounds a lot like how I have felt in recent years.

I, too, was a grade A student. I expected that I'd be studying biology so that I could become an ecologist or an ethologist. But circumstance drove me in a different direction. My current resume consists of menial labour jobs. I've worked at a factory, I've worked as a cleaner for the better part of my working life. At times, this made me feel bad about myself. But not anymore, because I've always performed my jobs to the fullest of my abilities, and more importantly, to the satisfaction of the people working at the buildings where I was cleaning. The last job I held was at a little store, and it was a nightmare because the boss was an unmitigated tyrant who treated me like a packing mule and postponed the signing of my contract.

I have often thought about following some education, but I've always ended up sabotaging myself because a nagging voice in my head kept saying that I somehow couldn't do it. Most recently, I decided not to apply for a German language and literature course that I was contemplating following a while back, because I figured I didn't have what it takes to make that work out for me. But I also think that there was a lot of fear involved there, perhaps even cowardice. I didn't take the risk. And now I guess I'll never know how it would have worked if I had taken that leap.

And that's my point. You can play 'what if' games when you decide that there is no point in making a certain step in your life. But you'll never know what that 'what if' could actually be, unless you do take that risk.

Aside from that, and I don't mean to sound self-righteous here or step out of line, but-- you have a family, who you've admitted love you and whom you love. So there's some responsibility there toward them, as giving up on yourself would directly affect the two of them. You must be careful in entertaining those thoughts of possibly harming yourself, even if you believe you'd never cross that line, since an idea can take root and grow, and develop into action.

As recently as a week ago, I have been having a couple of self-destructive thoughts, myself. Presently, I'm in a positive mood, but I know that it can turn around at the drop of a hat. I have not figured out how to change my negative attitude, but I do know that it's going to be something that requires effort.

One more thing, about the social meetings. Some 4 years ago, I was feeling very, very lonely, and I decided to visit a couple of interest/hobby gatherings to see if I could make some friends or acquaintances. I visited, among other things, an autistic circle, a nature club, and a Chinese course. None of these yielded any true friendships, and with most people I met there, I could not get along very well at all. My conclusion was that socialising wasn't really a thing that I do, to begin with. Currently, I spend my free time on my own, but I do visit two language courses (Chinese and Indonesian) so that I have a little bit of interaction, and that's going fine for now. I settled with the idea that I'm a loner, and even though most people are surprised when I tell them I have zero friends, I'm comfortable in telling them this.

I wish you good luck. Hope this can be of some help.

Hi Cinnamon, I sent you a pm. xxo <3

I feel like a failure, too. Really, if I was a crying person, I'd have a river of tears around me by now. Sometimes I just sigh and think, "Why bother?" I don't even have an answer for that.

Maybe try focusing on succeeding at just one thing. Like attending the classes. You may find its not that hard if you set your mind to it.

Thank you for replying.
About the course classes: It is an online course with meetings once a month. The meetings are not necessary for the course, but they can be helpful. Only the one I went to wasn't, because I couldn't concentrate for long enough. I think that may have been because I have some trouble with auditory processing but the result is that I just seem stupid, also to myself, because I can't understand the smallest thing.
In another meeting I tried to be nice and speak to different people, especially ones that sat alone, but the conversations didn't go well, and sometimes not at all. And in another group I go to every other week it's getting too busy now. Also, some of the people there don't listen to me if I say anything. And I don't say much, really. For instance, one woman asked in general when another event was taking place, and I was sitting next to her so I told her the date and time and place for that event, but she ignored me and turned to another person to ask it. Things like that happen always, and have happened all through my life. It makes me so tired, and I don't want to bother with people anymore.
But if I ever want to have a reasonable job I'll have to. Hell, even for an unreasonable job I have to talk to people. Right now I just live off my partner, and he thinks that I will get my degree and then get a better job but I don't think that will happen because it's not what you can do, or how hard you work that counts, it's how you present yourself and connect with others, and I can't seem to master that. I will always be dependent on my partner, and I'll be a burden to him, and probably also to my son when he grows up.
Even cleaning jobs are getting out of my reach because I'm starting to have physical problems and I can't do as much as I could do when I was younger.
I have tried many things, many jobs and courses and self-employment and nothing worked out and I don't think it ever will, and I'm fed up with trying. How long should I keep trying? How often should I fail and feel horrible about myself and how long should I be a burden on others and on society before I'm allowed to give it up?

Those people you describe really do sound rude and jerky. There certainly is no shortage of them. I would suggest you try changing the groups you are in, rather then giving up. But as for the class, the main thing is to complete what you start.

You can not control the externals, such as what people are going to be like. You can only do what you can to accomplish your own goals. As part of a family, it is not only for yourself that you don't give up.

I don't think the lady I wrote about was deliberately nasty. She is quite nice and friendly to everyone. I don't think anyone is being deliberatly nasty to me. I think that they ignore me maybe because they don't even realise that I'm saying something, because I'm not speaking in the correct manner. Or they don't think that what I say can make sense because I'm too stupid. I probably come across as either stupid or insane. Anyway, I don't know what they are thinking, but I don't think they ignore me because they want to be nasty. That makes no sense; they have no reason to do that.
I think people ignore me or don't listen to me because I don't speak in the right way. I used to speak very very quietly, and I have no improved that; I speak quite loud now, but it still doesn't work.
The funny thing is that I'm very good at one to one conversations. It's just in groups that it doesn't work so well.
And I'm so fed up with trying and trying and trying. Surely there has to be a point where you are allowed to give up and leave other people for what they are? I wish I could just stay home always, and never go out and never see anyone apart from my partner and my son and my cats.

You are not a failure, your probably going through a bit of a mid-life crisis.

I noticed you said you enjoy art and writing. Those aren't things you need to be a social butterfly to do. Why not pick up a brush and paint something?

A midlife crisis? Well, partly I suppose. Although I am not feeling any different than I did when I was twenty. I was a useless failure then, and I am still a useless failure. The midlife part is that I realize that it will not get better anymore, and that I'm steadily getting too old for getting any sensible job. When I finish my university degree I'll be approaching fifty, so no one will give me a job then.

As for doing things that I enjoy - I don't need to do things I enjoy, I need to do things that provide me with an income. I'm forty-four, not fourteen - I can't waste my life drawing and writing and generally being completely useless. I am a burden, I have always been a burden and I will always be a burden. I want to earn money, not to get wealthy, but to be self-supporting so I am no longer a burden and a scrounger.

I even tried making money as a writer. It doesn't work. My writing is okay, fairly good probably, but that's not what makes the money. The money only comes from good marketing, for which you need good social skills.
The worst is, if I look at it objectively, I should have good social skills. I do everything that needs doing, and more, but all the things that seem to work for others don't work for me. I can't see where I'm going wrong, but again, I am fed up with trying, and if I wasn't such a coward I'd jump off a cliff and free everyone of me.

I think you need to change the way you look at life. I also think you need to change your attitude towards yourself. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Get up, don't give up and get on with it instead of wallowing in it.

I once knew a woman who wanted to be a nurse all of her life but either, never had the money or the time due to family/life commitments etc. She was 46 when I spoke to her. She said "I'm 46 now and the course goes for 5 years so I'll be 51 when I finish!" I said "How old will you be in 5 years time if you don't do the course?" She said "51". I said "51 and not a nurse".

I don't know if that's relevant or even makes sense but it sounds good

In life, if ever I'm tackling something that seems insurmountable, I always remember my favourite saying - "How hard can it be? I mean, it's not rocket surgery!"
Apart from making me smile and laugh, it reminds me of all the wonderful things I've achieved in life despite how unachievable and too difficult I start out thinking they are. That keeps me going.

Don't give up? I've been going on without giving up pretty much always. I've done courses, and when I couldn't manage I did a course in something easy just so I'd have a qualification. So I got that, but I still failed to find a job that earned enough to make me self-sufficient. But I have always worked, even if it was volunteer work, or only a few hours a week (like now) And I'm doing a course now! If I don't kill myself I'll finish it, I'm pretty sure of that - but then what? I won't be getting a job. There aren't enough jobs, I suck at self-promotion, and I'll be old with the most patchy job history you can imagine. No one will be interested in me. That's not 'giving up', that is being realistic.
So then I am a failure with a university degree, and I'll have wasted all the effort of my tutors, and the money for the course, and generally all the money and time and effort that has been spent on me. This isn't just about me and what I want. My existence is a burden on society and on my loved ones. What is the purpose of someone like me? Nothing. I contribute nothing. I only take.
But I admit, it's also about what I want., I'm tired of trying and failing. Like really really tired. I don't want to do it anymore. I'm tired of people telling me to keep trying and people telling me to enjoy little things. I do all that, but that's not what matters, is it?
Does no one ever read the news here? It's all about unemployed scroungers and how horrible these people are and how they should be ashamed of themselves. Well, I am ashamed of myself. I want to do better, but I haven't succeeded, and not for lack of trying. There is a point where a person has to admit that it's not gonna work. I want someone to tell me that I have tried enough now and it's okay to give up.

But even then, I won't have the courage to end my existence. I'll just go on and on, being a waste and a burden and a scrounger, and I'll probably live until I'm a hundred, and that will be a hundred years of wasted time and resources.

Cinnamon, I do read the news. These are difficult times, economically speaking. People are getting sacked left and right. Now, the consequence of that is that the job market is flooded with people who potentially have more skills than both you and me, and will therefore have a better chance at snatching that job than we do.

So what do you do?

Maybe it's a matter of 'riding out the storm'. I spent the second half of 2011 applying for jobs with no result until I was hired for two jobs simultaneously in March 2012. It's not easy, but it's not impossible.

While you're working and studying and are looking for new opportunities, don't look at yourself as a burden. You can't help the situation that you are in, while you are trying to change it to begin with. It seems that you're doing all you can. There are people who are having a more downhill ride than you in life, and who are just sitting on their doff twiddling their thumbs.

Think about what ImAnAspie said '51 and not a nurse'. Hell, I've thought like that. I thought "If I do that biology course now I'll be 31 when I get my Master's degree and that's suuper ooooold and I don't have people skills and I'm horrible at writing papers and I don't rate my chances at securing a good internship". Now isn't that the silliest attitude to have? Right now I have a goal, one that is not set in stone, one that I don't have a clear expectation of how it will go: I want to get a basic cleaner's diploma that will give me a headstart on top of my experience as a cleaner at both a city hall and a museum already. That way, I'll at least have something of a financial back-up plan. If it fails, I'll look for the next thing. Don't set yourself up to fail. I did that last year, when I went to my exams. Couldn't take the heat, bailed out on my oral exams halfway through. It hurt like all hell. I was a broken man for most of autumn. Do not do that. Finish your Open University courses and see what you can harvest from them. And in the meantime, cherish the spare time that you have, whether you spend it with your family, or take some "me"-time drawing or writing; not for money or income, but for yourself and maybe for the people around you.

If nothing else, pay NO attention to any opinions expresed in the media that might relate to your situation.
They are paid to get attention for their publication by making thing seem worse than they are.
And expressing things in an inappropriately opinionated fashion.

One godd thing that has happned to me as I get older is that I have stopped thinking or imagining how others think of me unless theres' some actual factual evidence that the input is worth considering.
(The only time this doesn't work out is when i run into folks I knew in grade school -- there's still a lot of sadness about how poorly that all went).

You have value because you are a person, end of story. Llive each moment is it happens. Don't try to predict the future, we humans suck at it. It's a tremedous waste of energy.
I've spent my life either reducing or adjusting my expecations for myself. It's actually a huge relief to know that you are not required to figure out everything about your life Right NOW.
And I've made Rule that if I recongnize that I'm: Tired, Hungry, Streseed, Lonely etc, any combination thereof, then any thoughts that come into my head which have to do with evaluating my entire life and my self-opinion are Complete CRAP and they are to be Ignored. I just table the enire matter until I am in a frame of mind where I can give my current situation a fair evaluation or (shock ) realize it really isn't needed right now.

I don't always suceed at this but I'm getting better at it.

Thanks for your posts.
A lot of the things you wrote were helpful, but perhaps no one can really help with this.
I am just going on for now, and I hope I'll one day have the courage to kill myself, but I don't think that will happen. I'd have done that a long time ago if I were brave enough.

I feel you cinnamon. Except I gave up only a couple years/decade into what you seem to have endured for 20-30.

I agree with you, it's stupid to keep trying when you know it's just going to be failure. I too am an intelligent person, and I actually quite enjoyed what I was studying, but my depression (and yes, I'm treating it as a separate thing than simply my attitude, for it is!) made it IMPOSSIBLE for me to concentrate enough to succeed in academia. Hell, I still can't even focus on when my husband says something to me all the time. My mind wanders and does it's own thing so often. I'm tired a lot of the time too. Like, ALL the time. I can't always sleep, but I bet I could/would sleep 18 hours a day if it were dark 24/7.

I see a lot of the advice that people are giving you isn't coming from the same place as you are. They see you as having a negative attitude, that you just need to pull up your socks and keep going, something good will come of it. But I don't think that's it. You have something medically/physically wrong such that you can't concentrate, such that you're tired...that isn't a social thing.

I 100% disagree about what matters. Enjoying things, little or big, IS the purpose of life. That is EXACTLY what matters. What else matters? How productive you are??? Ya right, society doesn't give a rats ass if you're working or not. Sure, individuals will frown on you, but that's them needlessly judging you. You working won't have any impact on those people's lives. None. Zip. Your productivity is a minute blip on a giant scale.
Have you thought about that if you could get a job and you worked at it and came home exhausted everyday that you wouldn't be any happier for it? It sounds like you'd have no energy for anything else. Productivity is completely meaningless without enjoyment, on a micro and a macro level. That's why people ARE productive, because they see it as benefitting themselves. We advance as a society because we see things that need to be done in order to make life better. If life is WORSE being 'productive' that's just ass-backwards. If it doesn't benefit you, then productivity is worthless. If you can't enjoy life due to all the stresses and hoops you'd need to jump through in order to obtain 'productivity', then there's really no point in doing it.
More on a macro level, have you considered that we don't have a lot of jobs because, well, we don't NEED them? Society's had a boom in technological and scientific advancement...we can have so much now and work so little compared to what humanity once had. This is supposed to be a good thing. But because people don't know how to relax and how to distribute wealth evenly, people are floundering to keep growth and keep jobs even when that ideology will cause us to hit a brick wall at some point, maybe sooner than later. Besides which, what if you DID get a job in this recession and you took that job from someone else whose spouse doesn't look after the family? You could be putting someone on the streets.

Importantly, you've conveyed to me that you don't have the faculties to be the productive person that you're striving to be. You're getting physical issues now from your age, and despite being an intelligent person, it ISN'T enough. You need to be able to concentrate, you need to be properly social on some level, and right now you need to know the right people to even be considered for most jobs.
There's no shame in accepting that working isn't for you. There's no shame when you can't do it. There's only shame if you think you can and you don't. Do you really think you can? Or is it everyone else telling you that you can and to give up would be the worst thing? Do others, family and strangers, know what you're going through better than you do?


There are 2 approaches to your problems. The 1st approach you've been trying for years, apparently, which is to overcome your difficulties and just get that job, just be self-supporting. The 2nd approach is to change your view of what shame is.

You have tried enough now. It's okay to give up.
But even this won't be enough if you don't truly believe, for yourself, that giving up isn't shameful. And that's really, really hard to do. I know it all too well. North American culture always has been a staunch supporter of hard work. Laziness is amoral. But you know what? It's not criminal. And that's a good thing. Be as goddamned lazy as you want to be, and throw off all these crazy notions brain-washed society has about hardwork being the backbone of the world. It's not. Your family will enjoy you more the happier you are. In fact, you'll probably be more productive the happier you are too, oddly. If money becomes an issue in the future, guess what? Welfare or other social assistance surely exists where you live...it has a perfectly good purpose you know.

You're allowed to be lazy. I give you permission :-p

Look into seeing a doctor about your physical problems too.

Sadly, I wish I could tell you that I purely mentally overcame the societal roadblocks of not feeling ashamed of myself for giving up or failing when I tried. Well, I did, but it wasn't from sheer force of will to change my ingrained morals. I found out I was in fact sick. (No thanks to doctors though, I did all but the final step of figuring out what I had for myself.) I have celiac disease. I truly think my depression, my lack of ability to concentrate, my tiredness, other physical pains...all caused by undiagnosed celiac disease. Being diagnosed with something that isn't some nebulous 'in the mind' disease of depression allowed me to really shift my thinking. Yes, being a 'victim' as some would call it truly has helped me, and therefore everyone else around me too. (That and quitting eating the food that was making my body attack itself.)

But in a sense you have one up on me when I decided to give up trying, (well, I'd give up for a few months them jump back on the wagon, went on like that for quite a few years); you have an ASD. It's a medical disability, so hopefully you can shift your 'blame' and therefore your shame onto it as well. Leverage your disability for all you can. It's disabling afterall.

Nope, I don't have advice on how to interact with people better. But my other advice comes from my own experiences that do seem quite similar to yours.