> I feel for you that you won’t experience that part of human existence
Certainly it's something my depression holds over my head every day. Everything I do is less fun when I consciously realize I'm removing my ancestors from the gene pool in participating in those things. It's like I can choose to put more value in other things besides offspring, but also... I can't? When it seems like every stranger around me is married and/or has children?
When I feel myself backed into a corner and only perceive the choice to call that decision sour grapes, I feel like something has gone seriously wrong...
Interesting. Women used to feel this pressure, wanting success and a career, but also wanting family and children. They looked at men with envy, thinking that men did get to have it all. But men are feeling that same tension.
I think it basically comes down to being finite. We want more than we can get. We have to choose, and we don't want to, because choosing means giving up something that we really want.
I suspect that your depression doesn't make it easier. But the overall struggle is a very common one.
I exercise, read books, try to learn instruments, look for work, and go to therapy weekly.
I have had strangers say to me that it's no problem if I just want to put myself out there and see who bites, but I do not see it that way. My (same-sex) best friend I knew for 6 years recently cut off all contact when I tried to set boundaries with them. It was the first time in my life I tried to assert myself and because I reaped the consequences I assumed I did something wrong. I read up online and understood logically I did nothing wrong. But fact is, it's been half a year and I haven't recovered from that friendship alone. And there were others like it. I don't have anything to replace that (flawed) relationship and the trauma of being discarded reopened all my pre-existing childhood-and-up trauma they already knew about so, I mean, yeah.
I talk to my therapist about it of course but that makes my current life no less of a torture. I've come to accept maybe that's how it will be.
What this tells me is I'm not ready for a relationship right now. It's my early 30's and I don't understand the basics yet. The way I was raised I've already been through enough confusing social rejection and socializing just demoralizes me nowadays. I'm not willing to go forward and date if I'm no longer interested in the first place because that isn't fair to the other party. I need to make friends before I am ready to date, having zero friends right now, and the interest for that isn't there either. It took me way too long for me to realize my heart wasn't in it and I was doing people a disservice when I need to work on myself first and foremost.
...not to mention I'm still looking for work after being laid off, but I felt no different while I was employed.
And before someone says these are flaws people should accept me for... they're not unfortunately. I'm beginning to suspect they're on the level of a personality disorder. Having enough previous less impactful diagnoses, I think it's on me by this point if I couldn't make anything out of them.
Certainly it's something my depression holds over my head every day. Everything I do is less fun when I consciously realize I'm removing my ancestors from the gene pool in participating in those things. It's like I can choose to put more value in other things besides offspring, but also... I can't? When it seems like every stranger around me is married and/or has children?
When I feel myself backed into a corner and only perceive the choice to call that decision sour grapes, I feel like something has gone seriously wrong...