I’m 18, soon to be 19, but I feel so left behind… my 3 years younger sister went on her first date. In school (in my country we graduate HS at 19) and I always hear classmates talking about jobs, parties, even just living and I feel so left out… Im not trying to be spiteful or anything, but I don’t have a driving license, never had a relationship and spend most of my time rotting in my room. I just feel so horrible, having lost so many years and knowing the pain will likely eat away many more, having tried to escape it so hard and yet constantly falling and falling and falling… a complete waste of life, an unfixable flaw in my brain…
I think a song I like, hymn to the decadent life, describes these feeling the best.
“Without being anything, I stare into the void.” Complete loss of identity. A disconnect of myself from my body, from who I want to be.
“I’m so sorry for existing, I’m a worthless adult wasting precious air” The painful reality that I can’t blame anyone for my failure, that it’s my fault, that I ruined my life.
Chat, am I cooked?
At 18 nobody actually knows anything. They have awareness but no context yet. Don’t worry about it.
Also, don’t compare yourself to others. That’s a terrible metric. Are you meeting your needs? Are you hurting anybody? Literally nothing else matters.
NGL, be it in a year or a thousand years, at no point will the number of dates you’ve been on matter, and the number of miles you drove a car will be the most infinitesimally small negative.
Figure out what you want to have before you die and work in that direction.
I am a 35 year old virgin, who has never been on a date. I should be even more cooked. But, that’s not how things work. Please don’t compare yourself with others.
First, focus on yourself. Depression is not unfixable. You should start going to therapy. It helped me a lot. And I genuinely believe that it could help you.
It’s good that you got how you are feeling out, and I won’t deny you that… but…
No, you haven’t failed. Your best and your worst years are still ahead of you. Are jobs, parties, romantic relationships what you want right now? Who or what kind of person do you want to be? A carbon-copy of your sister or classmate? I don’t think so. You should spend some time to set aside the past, figure out what you want for yourself in the future and how you can attain it. Stay away from alcohol and (non-prescribed) drug dependence, and find what activities bring you joy. Your life can begin at any point you choose it to. Here’s some ideas, do with them as you wish:
Go to the library, pick out a book you might like, read it in the comfiest indoor or outdoor spot you know.
Go for a short walk, jog or mix. Try to get a little farther every day. Find parks, rivers, lakes, plazas of interest. Or watch some exercise videos, go to the gym and try them out with some 5 lb weights and use some of the machines on the lowest setting. Every other day, come back and work your way up the difficulty. It should be very rare, but ignore people that try to pester or make fun of you, but if they have genuine helpful advice or ettiquite tips you can learn from that. Search around for local sports clubs.
Volunteer for a food bank, soup kitchen, or a museum that has the kind of things you find interesting. Helping others live their life can bring both satisfaction to yourself and ample learning opportunities, and a chance to make friends.
Clean and organize your room. If you’re going to be spending a lot of time there anyway, might as well make it look nice.
In terms of a job, go to any “career event”, “open campus day”, “university fair” that you might have in your area. Look around for companies, industries and subject areas you find interesting, you’re not looking to be hired right away, but to ask questions about what kind of work they do, and education and experience you may need to be in that role. Ask what they enjoy most about their job and what they don’t like as much. Unless you’ve experienced something directly you won’t truly know how you will feel, but these are good reference points to go off of. If there’s a career path that suits you, figure out where and how you can get the necessary education.
Do you want a driver’s licence? If not, end of story, stop fretting about it. If yes, what country are you in, and what’s stopping you? Money, or will? Do some quick research on what you need, do hundreds of online practice questions by searching “[my country] driving knowledge test practice questions”, read a handbook if available and keep doing practice questions until you feel comfortable and are getting well above the passing grade.
Being social is nice or whatever, but pick any of these that you can start doing today or within the next week without anyone else’s help.
I live in the Czech republic.
I can’t make my driver’s license because I can’t make it on time to the driving school because I commute to school (I live in a small village) and my ability to do anything novel is limited because I have to study for maturita (school leaving exam that you have to pass to graduate HS here) and uni entrance exams. My parents fortunately agreed to cover the application fees for the school and the tests so I’ll probably apply after graduation. I hope to get accepted to uni, so I’ll probably apply to work part time over the summer.
I am looking very much up to being able to move to a bigger city for university and have a fresh start, the sight of change, of movement is probably the main thing keeping me afloat right now.
Thanks for responding to me.
Nice. This should be standard boiler-plate text for this subs header. To the poster, I wish the sunlight finds it’s way into your soul. All the best.
I’m nearly 60, & have survived 3 waves of rather massive brain-injury ( autism in the 1970’s, literal brain-decimation in the 1980’s leaving me much-of-the-time catatonic, for years, & a 1000-ish cudgel-concussions trying to break will-to-live from my brain, in the last 1.5-decades ), & 7+ years of outright homelessness.
Frame-of-reference is everything.
We need to compare what we’re enduring with that the people in Ukraine, Palestine, or Sudan are enduring, & see that our whole ego-“world” is insignificant in the planet’s scheme of things.
& that so long as our G-D-given potential still lives, then our life can make BIG difference, to someone, somewhere, somehow, somewhen.
You aren’t gone, yet, are you?
If you aren’t gone yet, then you can still make-good in some measure, and evil will try to prevent that.
Partly, what I’m saying is that we have to have our souls/continuums, and NOT our egos, be our frame-of-reference
( my soul is still unconscious: so it got itself caught in a life-abuse-toy “life”, to “prove that that isn’t real”,
… the same as some addicts obliterate their lives to “prove that addiction is the LORD and life isn’t able to compete”…
I have wanted to embed a hammer in my soul’s face, for many years, now, to CAUSE it learning/growing-up.
But the ONLY way to cause a continuum/soul to experience actual-learning, is to earn that underlying-change, that eternity-scale learning, through enduring decades of life:
which means that the ONLY weapon I’ve got is forcing growing-up into my unconscious-mind, as completely as I can, as long as I can, & then …
… hopefully that soul won’t do the same thing to yet-another-life, in the future:
universe recycles souls: reincarnation.
I used to be Catholic, until I understood that the soul caught in “me” had lived multiple lives, before, & I’d experienced memories of some of those.
Since the Abrahamic religions disallow that, … they … don’t have the objective-truth that I need.
Since the only religions which DID match the evidence were Buddhism & Hinduism, I was forced to make my worldview fit what the evidence backed.
Since I can’t stand religiosity as an “answer”, that ruled-out Hinduism.
Etc.
IOW, Empiricism is exactly what I found that Buddha/AwakeSoul Gautama did, & what he provided us with.
I’m NOT pushing that; I’m ONLY giving context/frame-of-reference, for my reasoning, logic, & reactions.
IF one doesn’t understand WHY someone does something, then … how the hell can one understand what their intended-consequences are, right? )
Anyways, in my perspective, either I keep living, keep enduring all the removed shit that my life is, until I succeed in breaking the wrongness that my soul/continuum enforced on this-life,
XOR … I’ll have accommodated it … onto future-lives, too.
Since I don’t want them being subject to the same removed abuse-life I got caught in, therefore I have obligation to make the soul/continuum that obliterated my-life’s worth LEARN AND GROW UP, even if it costs me, ongoingly.
: )
So, as much as I may hate my life, much of the time,
& as much as I may spend much of my life wishing I had the guts to kill me …
… I’m glad I can keep making-difference, making-progress, even though it doesn’t look like much of anything ( health problems are all I manage to fight, & I study & learn, so there’s that ) … & the future will be better, not for me, but for whomever this soul/continuum gets caught-in, it’ll be better than it would have been, because I’m grinding-through the removed karma that this-life got caught in.
( it is possible to experience little karma in a life, or much karma, or too-much.
There is a Buddhist prayer which goes something like:
“please let my-life experience as much of the adversity of my karma, as I can sanely bear, so that future-lives are released from that, for them to experience better fortune”
The root-guru of the Christians, benJoseph, gave the SAME concept, when he told his followers to face into their karma, to “take up their cross”.
To remap it into normal-life, an old trucker told me, once:
"the difference between young truckers & old truckers is simple:
young truckers believe everything will always work in their favor, so they party until the last-possible-second, & then go do the work, but that often means they fail, when things go wrong, & they blew their opportunity.
Old truckers, however, KNOW that shit goes wrong, so they MOVE, as soon as they can, & get progressing on the work, and if things go wrong, they probably still get the work done on time.
Work 1st, party later.
The young don’t understand that."
Anyways, it’s true at all scales:
your life isn’t finished, yet, so you CAN make-good on more of your potential than you have been doing, right?
The fact that you didn’t understand what opportunity you were wasting … so?
the past’s gone.
That’s only history, now.
You ONLY can change NOW & your-future: the past’s gone.
So, do you value your potential?
Enough to make it real?
Enough to make it survive?
Enough to cause it to happen?
Face into your karma, & make it happen.
Feel free to deem everything I say to be worthless, or nonvalid: many do: it’s normal.
But this I’ve found to be true, & maybe somebody, somewhere, will understand, & have harmonious-with-this perspective, & value the boost they get from seeing it plain in text.
: )
Salut, Namaste, & Kaizen, youngster: keep keeping getting-up.
PS:
People who fail a zillion times learn more than the privilege-idiots who have advantage handed to them on silver plates.
The stuff I’ve learned, that normal-life people never encounter, because they’ve never had to spend decades making their central-nervous-system approximate normal-level human function…
…unconscious-mind is much more herdbeast-like than people understand.
You have to be simple, plain, direct, forceful, & persistent with getting it working in right-direction…
& if your unconscious-mind is solidly-programmed to sabotage your-life, then you got work to do.
Addicts are in that boat, btw.
Find the support you need, & do it.
In both addictions & phobias, I think getting a good hypnotherapist to get into one’s unconscious-mind and ASK IT WHY it is doing what it is doing, might well be the most-effective-treatment available: unconscious-mind doesn’t generally understand that it can be seen to be doing what it’s doing!
Books, videos, friends, particular kinds of music, whatever, a garden, ANYthing: it’s the results that matter.
Stack-odds, & get making progress in owning YOUR life, because the unconsciousness-addiction/passtimes which have owned your-life, thus-far, seem to have robbed you, badly.
& why pretend that that’s somehow “your” fault!
You were born in infant into this world, right?
How the hell could that be a “fair” rigging?
You’re waking-up to responsibility-for-your-life NOW, so … accept that many never even get that far!!
I once worked with a guy who told me that in Iran, in a rally ( for the Shah? ), he suddenly woke-up, & … didn’t understand why he was in this group, shouting slogans, & shaking his fist with everybody, against … whatever.
He left.
He’d been born into programming, & woke-up in a rather life-threatening regime.
You are waking-up, to whatever degree, now.
Get pragmatic.
Get objective.
Invest in what you value.
KNOW, sort-out, work-out, what you value.
Discover what REALLY is in you, what YOU mean.
That likely will take decades, but too many never do it, only “getting along”, instead.
& giving-up is what evil wants you to do:
keep getting-up again, just as a means of getting in evil’s face.
shrug
maybe something in this’ll be good for you, I don’t know.
It’s here for anyone who wants it, though.
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