This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

What do we do?

You tell us, you're the role models for those of us in our thirties, y'see.

My vision has gone 'bifocalish', ie I gotta take the glasses off to read.

left out we certainly be should not.

Ah, the Iain Sinclair "serendipitous random art collage" problem (xp).

I wish I could afford a midlife crisis -- I'd sure have one.

Wait, what were we talking about again? I must have dozed off.

Btw, Rock, that just means you'll have to live longer.

The nights are fair drawing in.

My toes hurt -- do yours? I think it must be this weather.

Shit, Michael, with my genes I'm doomed to 95 years at least.

I blame it on so-called asylum seeking feral politically correct Broken Britain.

(the weather, that is)

That monologue with Rhys Ifans last night.

What was all that about?

Eh?

Eh?

I can't stop feeling all \o_O/ seeing twentysomething girls wearing essentially the same fashions that girls wore when I was twenty.

Actually more like when I was fifteen.

Haven't exactly been bombarded by deelyboppers and pop socks around these parts.

Shoreham - liminal, but copper messy.

One upside: being a dirty old man sort of suits me.

I had my midlife crisis from the ages of approx 15-42 so I reckon I'm due uncomplicated happiness now.

This thread is so much like me at an FAP that it's spooking me out.

Yeah, I'm drinking here at work, too.

One upside: being a dirty old man sort of suits me. -- Rock Hardy

As per suits, I don't think I've got any I fit into anymore.
On the, er, thinner side: I amn't that dirty really.

Just don't recognise anything in this thread. Including the posts I posted so that suggests it was probably a crap idea. Oh well, it was worth a momentary try.

Please to God never let me actually become a "fortysomething."

One upside: being a dirty old man sort of suits me.

What are the characteristics of a fortysomething? (I bet I have most of them).

I can legally have an affair with someone half my age!

so, is anyone on for it?

thread is otm, though now I can also see how it mightn't be otm, and would not be surprised to find myself arguing either side of the question for fifteen minutes or so before getting completely distracted by some other stray thought

They say memory is the second thing to go. I can't remember the first one.

My drug of choice these days is Back and Body aspirin, for that extra frisson of caffeine.

Memory is going, true, but at least I remember the 70s

Memory is going, true, but at least I have begun forgetting the 70's.

hi.

um, I'm OK.

What are the characteristics of a fortysomething?

Being aged between 40 and 49. Anyway I though we were all 'middle youths' nowadays.

sorry to have woken you oldtimers up . but. I misread Marcello's OP as

Yes, I know, creeping balkanisation etc. but why should we be left out?

But please leave cheeky Ovaries at the door.

-- Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, August 27, 2008 2:35 PM (7 hours ago)

I'll have you know my ovaries are extremely well-behaved; veritable paragons of polite ovarian society.

The ovaries are fine, but I'm prone to brain farts now.

The world's worst song.

Comparing your ovary to a Bronte C/D?

Wuthering Ovaries

Thrustcrotch Minge

Carry On Bronteing

One upside: being a dirty old man sort of suits me.

-- Rock Hardy

^^^

haven't you all heard - us 40+'rs are saving the music industry.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/stevelamacq/2008/08/to_bb_or_not_to_bb.html

Come on - you're not too old to have forgotten this thread already...
I am too old for this...the 40 plus thread.

Don't even remember that thread but this one could do with a few more ovaries...

my right knee

wait, is your right knee also my right knee. Because - my right knee.

Turned 40 today! It’s been a nice bday, caught up with friends & went to fennesz gig, had a proper michelada (also made sure I was drinking a really nice cocktail at 00:01 to start my 40s right but that’s really yesterday)

It’s funny tho I’ve come to the city of my misspent youth for a nostalgia rush but I reckon nostalgia works better for ppl whose memory isn’t fucked, it’s a nice place to be anyway

Happy birthday wins!

aww wins, happy birthday, shame we weren't able to coexist on this thread, I just aged out a few weeks ago

hb wins.

i am the same age as lil wayne but i avoid this thread because i assume it’s all about back pain and stuff… and im not exactly proud of my 40s-ness. currently not reaping was I didn’t sow in my younger days and feeling hella old and worthless

Welcome wins

Right there with you brimstead. 5 years in and they’ve been brutal

Welcome to the club wins. My badge expires in a few years but glad we can drink together here for a little while

HB wins

hb wins.

"back pain and stuff"

This is what annoys me. When I turned 40 the general consensus was that it was all downhill from there, slowly at first, but inevitably, because we're perishable goods. But I've managed to sail through most of the past decade without major physical ailments. And yet, out of the blue, back in February this year I put some weight on my left leg and immediately had the most awful pain. It was a stabbing, shooting, throbbing, pulsing pain in my left thigh, from buttock to knee. As if a balloon of pain was being inflated inside my leg. A balloon of badness.

Gout? Arthritis? Lead poisoning? No, sciatica. An old person's illness. I suddenly understood why elderly people hobble around with crutches. It was dreadful while it lasted. I found that even turning my neck caused pain to shoot up and down my leg. Sciatica is particularly frustrating because resting actually makes it worse - you're supposed to exercise the pain away - and it's extremely hard to treat. The only practical options are maximal painkillers or surgery, but that carries the risk of complications. Exercising is hard because it hurts.

My morning routine consisted of taking a handful of painkillers, rolling out of bed carefully, drinking a cup of coffee, then struggling to get washed and dressed. And then I came down with sciatica, at which point my morning routine was the same, except with the added complication of being almost unable to put on socks. I had to use a cane to walk around. Bizarrely, the pain largely resolved when I got on my motorcycle and drove into work - perhaps because I was taking weight off my leg, nb this isn't an arch joke, motorcycling really did alleviate my sciatica - but it always came back.

If nothing else it gave me a certain amount of empathy for people who get addicted to painkillers after they suffer injuries. Like Howard Hughes. Also, I can imagine drug dealers preying on elderly sciatica sufferers by offering them heroin. I remember wondering if someone had ever thought about setting up a company that specialises in selling painkillers legally to elderly people, and after doing some research I have discovered that there are actually several very large companies that sell medications to vulnerable people. Imagine the money they must make! Perhaps there is an upside to human misery after all.

On a complete tangent, while writing this post I stumbled on this article from the BBC from February 2000. It's about the Duke of York, who turned 40 that month. He went up on the Millennium Wheel, as it was called back then.

"To further commemorate his birthday, the duke has published an internet interview in which he reveals his firm belief in the philosophy that life begins at 40. His optimistic declaration, made after surviving the trauma of divorce, sees the duke looking forward to maintaining his public image while pursuing a busy career and family life. "Life is a series of successes and failures," he said. "One must learn from the the failures and build on the success. ... I am becoming increasingly convinced that life does indeed, begin at 40.""

The actual interview appears to be lost to time and memory. Which raises the question of whether the BBC misquoted him, and he actually said that life began at the age of 14.

hb wins, hope you enjoy your drinks. Your les enfants terribles origins getting supplanted by actual old bastard irl status happens to the best... and also the worst of us!

Sciatica is particularly frustrating because resting actually makes it worse - you're supposed to exercise the pain away - and it's extremely hard to treat. The only practical options are maximal painkillers or surgery...Bizarrely, the pain largely resolved when I got on my motorcycle and drove into work

I had it in 2023-4!!! So bad I couldn't walk a block! I did crazy things like take a bike all the way to Midtown on the train just so I could ride a few blocks and/or lean on it while walking like a...what are those things called? A rollator? If I had to walk, I stopped very 100 ft to stretch the cramp out or I couldn't continue. I also found that riding my scooter for my work commute would massage it away for a whole morning!!! Scooter massage + heating pad would stop the spasm but not fix the issue. I went to phys therapy and did some of the exercises and started doing a lot of massage and gradually it just...got better?

When my calf spasmed I used one of those "shiatsu" neck massagers but flipped it upside down and stuck my calf in it. Eventually I broke the damn thing but it did the job.

Maybe we should offer motorcycles as the latest sciatica therapy.

I am just recovering from my second worse flare up. It’s brutal. Been about a month of sleepless nights and limping around. My worst was winter of 2021 when it shot all the way down to my foot. I remember putting sweatpants on and it feeling like someone was stabbing my foot when the tapered part brushed over. Awful stuff

you're supposed to exercise the pain away

Mmm I don't think you want to overdo it or just push through the pain, it's good to move but you still have to listen to your body, and the nerves need a chance calm down. The only thing that worked for me was lots of core strengthening (and better posture/using said core) and lots and lots of time.

Yeah I think the PT helped the original problem, but the leg was still in spasm from months of pain. The heated massager helped release the spasm out of my calf over a few weeks.

Everyone one of my flare ups are due to falling out of shape.

Oh I’m well into the aches and pains lol, last year I lost feeling in half of my hand for several weeks which turned out to be cubital tunnel syndrome & was added to the list of painful things that will recur forever

Thanks for the birthday wishes all, I had a great time and didn’t wake up too hungover today. My 40s have involved a lot of cocktails so far and I hope that trend continues

Turned 40 today! It’s been a nice bday, caught up with friends & went to fennesz gig, had a proper michelada (also made sure I was drinking a really nice cocktail at 00:01 to start my 40s right but that’s really yesterday)

It’s funny tho I’ve come to the city of my misspent youth for a nostalgia rush but I reckon nostalgia works better for ppl whose memory isn’t fucked, it’s a nice place to be anyway

― the babality of evil (wins), Wednesday, April 9, 2025 3:54 PM (yesterday)

god damn, wins, we have the same birthday! i'm 9 years older than you, though, so we get one precious year to coexist on this thread. wait, that sounds creepy, i don't mean that in a really creepy way.

i have a lot of regret about my 40s. i got this meme, originally from tumblr that goes:

User A: "Your 20s are for looking back to your childhood and thinking 'huh, that sure was fucked up, they shouldn't have done that to me.'

Your 30s are for looking back to your 20s and thinking 'huh, that sure was fucked up, I shouldn't have done that to myself.'

User B: "y'all aren't gonna believe what your 40s are for."

User C: "transgender sex?"

User D: "transgender sex."

I did not, in fact, spend my 40s having transgender sex. It's been six years at this point. Complete ripoff.

-

Having said that i think it's at least fair to say that my 40s, uh, did not go the way I expected them to go. April 2016 was a very different time.

As far as pain, yeah, I have a lot more physical pain than I did nine years ago. IDK. I've learned a lot about pain. My body is falling apart but it's _my_ body for the first time. A lot of the rapid proliferation of clinical symptoms in my 40s has been me taking care of my body for the first time, getting diagnosed. I learned how to walk in my 40s! I always used to duck walk. Now I have something resembling a proper gait. Just, like, the basic mechanics of my body, I never figured that stuff out before. I was really afraid of my body falling apart and pain increasing, but so far, at least, I'm doing OK with it. Constant back pain, a year's worth of rectal bleeding, my first colonoscopy, my first CAT scan, my first mammogram, occasional bouts of IBS (those were no fun, but thankfully they were rare)... physical pain and emotional pain are connected for me. I don't hate myself, which helps.

I got, and lost, my first "professional job", something that under better circumstances could well have been a "career". I bought and sold a house. I graduated college. I got my dick cut off. I wrote a memoir. I got into anime. I got diagnosed with BPD and ADHD and autism. I went viral on the Internet. I mean it was an eventful decade.

I don't really drink, so I walked down to an ice cream place my DBT therapist told me about. It was delicious. I'm trying to eat less, but fuck it, it was my birthday. And I got a good walk in, at least.

Birthday fist bump!

At the Meshuggah show. During Carcass set, was carrying my beer, got confused as to section I needed to walk to. Found it, turned, and leg just gave out and I fell hard on my hip. Can't put full weight on knee right now but I'm not tapping out.

But goddamn this is gonna hurt in the am

yeeeowch! ugh neando that sucks my dude

Yeah :(

I'm relieved it's not worse cos I've been looking forward to this for weeks lol

So I drank a lot and thar helped;)

\m/

So I thought it was mostly OK last night but clearly the alcohol masked it. I'm walking gingerly and can't put full weight on knee

Maybe need to see an ortho

Distal femur fracture

Eesh, horrid.

Oh no, so sorry to hear that Neando

one more suited to the 50's thread, but an old work colleague of mine from decades ago who we used to call Mr Racing. He walked into the Dewsbury branch of Asda with his brother and then swiftly dropped to the floor with a huge thud and died from a fatal heart attack. He was 55. I wasn't really a fan of him, but he was in a kind of on/off relationship with my sister and was nowhere near the worst boyfriend she ever had. But fucking life, man. It so soonly ends.

sorry to hear Neando!

So my dad is dying, and my brother and I took a trip to the Twin Cities to buy him groceries and pick up medications for him on Saturday because he's been too weak to leave his apartment for the past two weeks and every day I called him he would tell me he was running out of food and he just needed to get motivated to go out and buy more. Like forget it, we'll just go up there every couple of weeks from now on and get him whatever he needs at this point. My brother was supposed to take him to a doctor's appointment today, but it got cancelled. I told my brother to take him to urgent care instead, but my dad refused because he knows they'll try to hospitalize him. So now we're waiting for a rescheduled appointment next week Tuesday, because my dad has already broken that doctor's will to hospitalize him and maybe he'll get a medication change or something else helpful instead? I'm just waiting for the day when it seems like he's really not going to call me back (he's already ignored my calls on a couple occasions, annoyed that I want to talk to him so much), so I can call the cops to bust down his door, because at the moment we don't even have keys to his place. My dad has no one else to help him in his life but his children. He has no friends at all and his brothers live thousands of miles away and they have barely any contact with each other. I do have a cousin in the Twin Cities but he and my dad have never interacted in the entire time they've both been living up there. My mom who divorced my dad 33 years ago has the contact info for my dad's biological nephew, but he doesn't. I don't really resent my dad for his idiosyncrasies anymore but they're making it a little tough to deal with the situation at present. He said it was "very kind" of us to buy him food. We're his kids! To me, it's just part of the deal and should be assumed because that's what family does! But I guess that's my mother's philosophy speaking.

I can empathise with that. As you get older you start to dread unexpected phone calls. And then evil thoughts start to creep in. You start to think about the cost of care homes, and indirectly you put a monetary value on your parents' lives. I remember this article here.

"The fees pay for his wife, Maureen, who since September 2021 has been in a £7,200-a-month nursing home. He was told Maureen had just months to live when she was discharged from hospital after a severe fall in 2021, and she could not be looked after at home. But she has survived far longer than anyone expected – even though she can no longer speak, or recognise her husband of more than 50 years."

In the UK you don't get economic help if you have more than £23,500 in savings. My assumption is that in the United States the costs are higher and you don't get any help at all. In fact my assumption is that if your parents get sick in the United States the police visit your house and put a "this family is poor" sign in the garden; you have to fill out a 500-page application form for government assistance; the assistance lasts for twenty-five days; at the end of that period your parent is removed from the facility by armed guards and dumped in a nearby park. I could be wrong.

Xxposts got better news today.

Not a distal femur fracture. The doctor at the urgent care was pretty insistent it was, but his radiologist disagreed (after which he made a backhanded suggestion that he got it wrong), so he suggested I go to Ortho.

Ortho said he is nuts, no fracture.
Soreness due to fluid buildup that should recede. Knee brace alone good enough

x-post

Yeah, if anything he probably thinks he's saving my brother and me money by refusing care. I'd rather he died in some comfort though, as nice as it is for him to get to surf YouTube at home while he dies instead of having to watch whatever's on hospital TV. And selfishly it would be really convenient to know when he's about to expire, so I can get onto the other bullshit part of this which will be wrapping up his estate. When I was depressed, I honestly kind of wanted to predecease my parents just so I wouldn't have to deal with any of this. That wouldn't have been very nice for my brother though, or them in that imaginary timeline.

So my dad is dying, and my brother and I took a trip to the Twin Cities to buy him groceries and pick up medications for him on Saturday because he's been too weak to leave his apartment for the past two weeks and every day I called him he would tell me he was running out of food and he just needed to get motivated to go out and buy more.

― servoret

oh fuck

yeah i basically live my life pretty much the same way your dad lives his

llllllike

some people just kind of give up on life, you know?

and it sounds like your dad is one of those kinds of people

my dad spent the last three decades of his life waiting to die

didn't talk to his kids because he was too ashamed of abandoning us. didn't matter if we call him on the phone, he didn't answer. in fact he only ever answered the phone with a stream of obscenities. he didn't like talking to people.

i talk to my mom sometimes, not too much because we're both Very Opinionated People and we both love each other but it gets in the way. she's got kind of the same thing. she couldn't get out of bed for two days in 2020 and my brother was like "you should get an ambulance" and she said "no, ambulances are a racket". which is true but also she couldn't get out of bed to go to the bathroom so.

i only know this because i was listed as her emergency contact, because i lived with her in 2009. anyway it's ok, she's in assisted living now and is doing a lot better. she sees her sister. she had her hip replaced last week, i found out about it because my aunt texted me to tell "the surgery went ok". didn't know she was going in for surgery then. i mean i knew she was getting a hip replacement. i'm glad that, if things keep going the way they are, i'm gonna be on speaking terms with my mom when she dies. i do take after her in a lot of ways, though. i'm less ashamed of that.

anyway i've kind of fallen into the same thing. i mean you remember when i spent all last year with chronic rectal bleeding? and all year i was like "i should do something about that". good news, once i started eating raisin bran and carrots it stopped being a problem. but i'm the kind of person who will let that situation go on for a year rather than talk to anybody about it.

like don't get me wrong i'm not dying, i just kind of stopped talking to people or doing things after 2022. people tell me they worry about me and i say "oh, that's really sweet of you, thank you" and then i stop talking to them because i don't want them to worry about me. yes i know it doesn't work like that. like i'm physically capable of buying groceries. i'm just too depressed to get out of bed most of the time. and i mean, i'm not going to talk to people when i'm depressed, that would just bum them out.

i've gotten really good at changing the topic of conversation any time someone asks how i'm doing. everybody who knows me at all knows i'm doing terribly, but i'm not a threat to myself or others, so what can they do about it? people would like to help me, i just won't let them. i'm kind of impressed at how dogged some people are in continuing to talk to me. i used to arrange my entire life so as to avoid killing myself... now that that's no longer an option, i've switched to arranging my entire life in such a way to minimize the frequency with which i have to interact with other human beings. it reminds me of how profoundly, desperately isolated i am.

anyway that's probably nothing like what your dad's going through at all

Maybe you're not totally wrong, Kate. My dad very possibly has narcissistic personality disorder. I think that's why he gave up on trying to make or maintain friendships after his attempt to force my mom to be his only friend failed with the end of their marriage. She told me he flunked out of college the first time through because he was a bright kid who got to Madison and met people who were truly brilliant and it crushed his spirit. So he just has my brother and me as consolation for whatever he imagined his life was going to be, and he putters around doing things out of a performative sense of whimsy the rest of the time. He's nice in some ways but also terribly cynical and convinced he knows best about everything, I think. He passed on all sorts of weirdness to me that I really used to resent him for but have come to terms with especially since I think I've stamped out most of the narcissistic traits that I detected in myself. I'll miss him but there's a lot about him that I never even got to know because I was always engaged with him on his terms.

Maybe you're not totally wrong, Kate. My dad very possibly has narcissistic personality disorder. I think that's why he gave up on trying to make or maintain friendships after his attempt to force my mom to be his only friend failed with the end of their marriage. She told me he flunked out of college the first time through because he was a bright kid who got to Madison and met people who were truly brilliant and it crushed his spirit. So he just has my brother and me as consolation for whatever he imagined his life was going to be, and he putters around doing things out of a performative sense of whimsy the rest of the time. He's nice in some ways but also terribly cynical and convinced he knows best about everything, I think. He passed on all sorts of weirdness to me that I really used to resent him for but have come to terms with especially since I think I've stamped out most of the narcissistic traits that I detected in myself. I'll miss him but there's a lot about him that I never even got to know because I was always engaged with him on his terms.

― servoret

IDK, maybe I'm not totally wrong. I mean, I don't know your dad at all, so I can't say much about him. Some of the stuff he does just reminds me of myself. Not in a good or bad way. Just does.

It sounds like your dad maybe hasn't treated you as well as a father should treat his child. Maybe not. That's just the impression I get. I know my dad, well, he wasn't a very good dad. He abandoned his kids. The thing is, I don't actually blame him for that. He blamed himself. Like your dad, he put all his hopes on his kids - he kind of thought of us as the one thing of value that he ever had anything to do with.

I didn't find out a lot of this until after he died, when my ex-wife and I travelled to the nursing home where he lived, talked to the one friend he had. She seemed like a decent person. She converted him to Christianity, when he was dying, which he'd never been for the entirety of his life, but I guess I don't hold that against her. You know, he was just afraid to reach out to the people who cared about him, so who he wound up with was whoever showed up. And I think she did genuinely care for him as a person, not just as a soul to win for Christ.

The funny thing was I had all this guilt and shame about being a bad son, which I guess I was, though not for the reasons I thought. It never occurred to me that he might be a bad father. I thought his abandoning us was my fault somehow, because I was an ill-behaved child. Like I said, I don't blame him, though I can understand why it caused him so much pain. He couldn't save us. All he could do was get out of a situation that was, well, really not good for him.

I don't blame anyone, really. My mom, I mean, she had some pretty serious failings as a mother, and that sucked for me and for my siblings, and she did the best she could. She loved us and she did the best she could. I'm glad she's in my life now. My dad wasn't really in my life when he died, because he didn't answer the phone when I called. My mom has worked really hard to grow as a person and she's not perfect, but it's paid off. I've tried to work really hard to grow as a person, and... I don't know. It's hard when the people I've loved most in my life are people who haven't necessarily treated me well.

I've always been a quitter. It frustrates the hell out of the people who love me. I don't have a lot of... what do they call it... resilience. I encounter a setback and I figure that there's no way I can possibly succeed at what I'm trying to do, and I give up. The thing about... I've been diagnosed with BPD, and that's considered a personality disorder, clinically, like narcissism. And people treat personality disorders as some sort of innate thing, some sort of innate flaw in a person, but that's not my experience. My experience is that people aren't born flawed or broken. If there's anything that holds me back, it's the way I internalized the idea that there was something flawed or broken about me. What gets called "personality disorders", to me, that's learned behavior. And to me, narcissism and BPD, they both kind of stem from the same thing, which is people who don't have a lot of self-confidence, don't believe in themselves. So they - we - have a tendency to seek externally what's missing in ourselves. There's some crossover here with the masculinity thread, with what they're talking about over there. But it's not just a gendered thing, it's not just a guy thing.

For me, with BPD, my whole thing is that I just want to be loved. But the way I've learned to go about it, that's not effective. In fact a lot of times it's counterproductive. If there's one line I think sums up that kind of unhealthy behavior pattern, it's "All shall love me and despair". And narcissism, it's kind of the same thing except that what people there seek is external symbols of status. So a narcissist isn't going to care about other people really, they'll toss people aside if having that person in their lives doesn't help them get power and status. The thing is all that power and status isn't going to be satisfying, no matter how much they have, just like no matter how much other people love me, it's not going to substitute for me loving and valuing myself.

Well, these days I don't think there's something broken or wrong with me, but I also don't... I don't entirely trust myself. I don't want to ask for help because I worry that I'll get hurt. I got.. again, it's the lack of resilience. My therapists call it the "biosocial model". Like some of it is learned, but some of it is just, well. Stuff that doesn't bother other people hits me like a mack truck.

I grew up, you know... I didn't think like other people, I was autistic, I had ADHD, but I wasn't diagnosed with any of that. I had this weird body that didn't feel like mine and that I couldn't figure out how to use. And at the same time I was really intellectually... "gifted and talented", they said. I knew a lot of things, and I could talk like an adult at a young age, and when you can talk like an adult people tend to treat you like you're an adult. And I wasn't. The thing was I didn't really learn a lot, as a kid. I didn't learn _how_ to learn. I was weird and didn't have much in the way of social skills, so I got bullied a lot. That's not to say it's my fault I got bullied, that's just what happened. And because I didn't have those social skills, and because people didn't take me seriously, I tended to resort to extreme behaviors to try and get my needs met. It was just hard for me to learn what worked and what didn't, compared to a lot of people. I wound up doing a lot of what gets called "masking", trying to make myself look like I was normal and ordinary, because, I mean, the extreme behaviors didn't help, so at some point I just stopped trying to get my needs met.

And I still do have trouble with that... not because I'm asking in an inappropriate way, but because the world I live in, you know, whether or not I deserve to have my needs met, the resources aren't there. The resources aren't available. I give up, really, because I feel like nothing I do will ever be good enough. I've had that message reinforced again and again. I'm having that message reinforced in me, systemically, right now. Is it personally anybody's fault? No, but it's not like anyone here can change the world so I don't experience that. It takes exceptional resilience to be able to make it the way things are for people like me right now, and I just don't have much of it. So yeah, I give up.

Plus, a lot of the things that are hard for me are things that, you know, people think shouldn't be hard. Going to buy groceries? That's really hard for me. But people act like all of these things, all of these normal things that people are supposed to do to take care of their lives, that they're not hard. I would do something that was really difficult for me and I didn't get praise or positive feedback. Instead people would be sarcastic and be like "What do you want, a medal?" Tying my shoelaces was a lot harder for me than getting an A on a math test.

So I hit college and I just didn't have any of the skills to succeed. For me it wasn't that I met people who were "truly brilliant". I didn't think that I was "truly brilliant", I didn't believe in myself, but it's not like... even to this day, I honestly am just... smarter than most of the people I know. It's not something I'm bragging about because it's privilege. It's like bragging about having passing privilege. At the same time it's stupid to pretend I don't have passing privilege. I obviously do. It's just that people would get dazzled and thought that someone as smart as I was, of _course_ I was going to succeed.

I just didn't learn the skills. I excelled in the actual classes, but when it came to registering for the classes... that I couldn't manage. I didn't really know how to study. I'd never had to study before. No matter how brilliant someone is, if they don't have the skills eventually it will catch up with them. All of a sudden I wasn't succeeding, I was failing, and I didn't know what had changed.

I guess I've had other forms of privilege in that I've had people in my life who were willing to do everything for me, whether I wanted them to do those things for me or not. Because they saw how upset I was at not being able to do it, and it was easy for them, and they said oh the heck with it, I'll do it. And they dragged me kicking and screaming through college, and I graduated at the age of 40, but... I mean, there was a price to that. I had to leave that situation, just like my dad had to leave the situation he was in. At least I didn't abandon any kids. Wasn't ever able to have any. Which also means I'm not tempted to say, well, I may have failed but my kids, my kids will be able to do things that I couldn't. I don't think of myself as a failure. I just haven't been able to do a lot of things that, by rights, I should be able to do. It's not anybody's fault. It's not even my fault, really. I do my best a lot of the time. A lot of the time, though, I conclude that something is beyond my ability. And that if I don't know how to do something myself, well, I don't believe anybody is going to help me. Yeah, sometimes I'll go hungry rather than ask someone to help me with the shopping. Because if I ask someone, and they can't help me, well, that's so much worse than just going hungry in the first place. Because if I don't ask someone, the fact that I'm hungry is something under my control. I _could_ go shopping. I just don't. If I ask for help and don't get it, well, it's hard to not believe that I don't deserve help. Even if I intellectually know it, even if I know that it's not my fault if I ask for help and don't get it, those feelings... I've just been rejected so many times that I expect it.

And of course that does become a self-perpetuating cycle. I know that. I just don't know what to ask for, or how to ask for it effectively. I'm trying to figure out what a life worth living looks like for me, and it just seems impossible. Totally impossible.

I don't know. Maybe your dad has similar feelings. Maybe he doesn't. People who have those feelings generally don't talk about them. I mean, why bother? We don't believe it's going to change anything. Sometimes I just talk because I don't know what else to do. I don't really expect anyone to listen. I mean blah blah, another sob story, I try not to pity myself but people often act as though I am self-pitying or trauma dumping when I talk about this stuff.

Anyway. I know it's hard to love and care about someone like your dad. If someone doesn't care for themselves, you know, what can anyone else do? Nothing. It's possible to support people if they ask for help, if they _want_ help, but if someone won't ever ask, if someone rejects help when it's offered... it's an impossible situation. All you can do is hope against hope that they'll change. Me, I've tried really hard to change, and I guess I have in a lot of ways, but I've kind of run out of ideas. I don't really have any hope right now, any ambition, any desire for anything more. Again, maybe your dad has similar feelings. It's really sad and difficult when someone lives their life like that. Other people, I mean. Theoretically I at least have a choice. I just can't see any choice right now, for some reason.

Thanks for writing, Kate. Yeah, maybe my dad did want to change at one point and it was just beyond him. I had similar problems to you with being "gifted and talented" but not having good social skills or knowing how to mesh with my peers, because I was off in my own world following my muse (and copying learned behaviors from my dad and not paying attention to other people's feelings a lot of the time).

I don't know what to tell you about figuring out what a life worth living for looks like. For almost all of my adult life, I gave up repeatedly on that, starting when I went away to college in '96 and realized that I had made the wrong choice, exacerbating my mental illness into full-bore bipolar depression. For me, Zen was the answer because it gave me the freedom to look at the unhealthy sides of myself and do something about them. Now I exist to appreciate whatever spark of life carried off my attention when I was a kid while at the same time occupying reality with other people finally and finding fun in things like acknowledging strangers on the street, something I was deathly afraid of for years and years but always secretly wanted to do. It's dumb; I have no career prospects and probably will never fall in love with anyone at this point, but whatever moment I'm in is more than sufficient.

Pardon me for asking: Are you a new poster or a veteran poster with a new name?

(it's not that Kate)

No I meant servoret

I am a very old returning poster. I used to just go by "Chris F.", and I think I just used my gmail address as my login or something, because if you look at my old posts it gives my username as "servoret" but clicking through says that I don't exist, and I remember running into someone IRL in 2006 and giving out my email and him instantly recognizing me from that as an ILX0r. Sorry to come off as out of nowhere confessional. I was never a very good poster here; many apologies to anyone who ever read me and wished they hadn't. I just missed this place for some reason and there's thoughts I can't share with anyone IRL that I feel like I have to get off my chest; like I'm never going to tell my brother I think my dad might have NPD and that it fucked us up. I don't know, I could be wrong. I do love my dad; he's just got very clear limits as a person and it's frustrating to interact with that sometimes. My mom thinks he has autism; that's also quite probable and maybe it's both.

Is it too late to start skating again? Santa Cruz blue dot being delivered Monday

My wife, who is 50, recently got a pair of rollerskates and I’m terrified for her but acting like it’s cool because she’s a grownup. She was briefly flirting with the idea of roller derby and I gently reminded her how many back operations/injections she has had and I think she’s backed off of that.

Edit; It’s never too late to skate

Im at the coffee place and I order a small drip. Server takes my 4 dollars cash, makes change, I place the coins in the jar, she looks at the next customer. I stand there and she looks back and “oh!”

you got change for 4 bucks in a coffee shop in 2025??

for a small drip, there better be change for $4

It’s like that scene in caddyshack
“I ain’t paying no 50 cents for no coke”
“Then you ain’t gettin no coke my friend!”