suicide

her & ian both!

Ian should have been born in the 1930s and harbl in the 1950s (in soviet russia)

Now I'd like someone to come on and say 32 isn't old, thanks

:)

it's a cliche but it's true: life is full of changes (and there will be more unknown "failures" or "successes" to come), some good, some bad but sometimes the one that seems good at first arent so good at the end and vice versa.

but corey, it sounds like there are a lot of things that you want to do, that you are interested in - that you haven't even tried yet - so "ending it all" before you even try - well you shouldn't!

-- 32 seems young to me --

Good. I think everyone on here should be comforted by someone else slightly older in succession until Dr. Morbius or aimless comes on and cries.

(Not that I really want that to happen, but this is a joke about old people)

I'm 27 in a week and I feel so fucking old.

man, there are so many things i wish i could go back and tell my 32 year old self -- but i probably wouldn't, tbh -- it's better that i had the crushing realizations i did at 33.

oh...awesome

who is the oldest ilxor?

Steven Shasta, he's about to turn 64

wow - a dinosaur!

garu g's gran

having older friends is really good btw - even if you are incredulous about their assurances of the future, once you get to the point where things are starting to sink in, it isn't so scary because you can say, "Hey, this person went through this, and they made it out okay."

" it's better that i had the crushing realizations i did at 33"

all my life are a series of them, but i got used to it i guess lol

No, I do not know who the oldest person on ILX is. My closest friend here in Los Angeles is 67. He tells me the world is speeding up. He also told me that my best years were ahead of me. That was pretty rad

In terms of posters that currently regularly post, I think it's probably Aimless, who's 55.

if the shit that happened to me when i was 33 and 34 had happened to me when i was 23, i probably would have killed myself - like my 23 year old problems just seemed so insignificant in comparison

I love how we treat him as a wise old man, but my mom is that age and I don't consider her old xp

Shhhhh Aimless is having afternoon nap. Start making the oatmeal for when he wakes up and has another proverb for us.

corey if you want to know more about city colleges/other community colleges, i'm here in chicago. webmail me and we can talk about how to get some transferable credits under your belt without accumulating any debt. (i teach at a community college)

this is what you should be doing at this point, not despairing or starving. ps i am days away from being 35 so i am basically a village elder at this point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vINoPRPHXKY

35 is good, I recommend it!

Love is good, i recommend it!

suicide is not a good idea, i wouldn't recommend it - unless you're dying of a v v painful incurable physical illness

lol jaymc.xls strikes again! xposts

one of my bestest friends is 66. He's an awesome dude. several of my other friends were breeding in their 20s and never left their hometowns. most of my friends are underemployed and/or overeducated people who I think should have made more of their lives but who mostly seem happy with their lots.

Um, point is, expectations and preconceptions (and I had FUCKLOADS of them when I was 23, which is why I ended up a gibbering wreck in hospital thinking I was never going to do anything with my life) are a surefire way to let-down. I never did do anything really with my life, probably never will, but I have a good life and good friends and have come to terms with that as being enough, despite seeing my classmates going on to stride the world like a colossus while I answer phones for teenagers earning twice my salary. I'm 37, btw.

Oh, and I wish I'd had the collective wisdom of ILX when I was young and directionless. You guys are ace. I had to do all this shit on my own!

Love is good, i recommend it!

oh gosh well that's that sorted out then

I'm 27 in a week and I feel so fucking old.

when people say shit like this I want to say to them: I remember how you feel, but can you grasp that pretty much all my dreams came true after I turned 30? get the fuck out of your twenties. they are too stressful. later days is where it's at imo

er, undereducated. I don't think any of my friends are too smart, that's like the worst compliment ever. And I doubt they think they should have made more of their lives, I just think my friends are ace people who deserve better. I didn't explain that very well. Luckily the people to whom I refer will not be reading this.

xposts to my own directionless witterings

and if all those dreams don't come true, you end up with different dreams - or you can get hit by a bus or die when your tour van rolls over because a dude in the band you are touring with falls asleep at the wheel

Sorry I haven't responded in a while, my friend just came home and we talked for a bit. It felt better to cry about it. I wasn't able to before. I think I will survive this.

pretty much all my dreams came true after I turned 30? get the fuck out of your twenties. they are too stressful. later days is where it's at imo

this post is where it's at

in the meantime, let me introduce you to the city colleges. there are lots of nice people there.

Okay, I'm sending you an email.

Now I'd like someone to come on and say 32 isn't old, thanks

Speaking as an officially credentialed 44 year old, I can state for the record that 32 isn't old.

Anyway, admrl's "Sometimes when everything seems broken you only need to fix one thing and the rest seems to sort itself out somehow" is the Stealth Truth Bomb of the thread.

get the fuck out of your twenties. they are too stressful. later days is where it's at imo

If I could second and third this, I would. Life didn't begin until my mid twenties and really didn't start getting crazy and fulfilling until my late twenties.

xpost to Zeno, sorry to be a dick there, I do that sometimes.

other xpost, The reason I feel depressed about my age is because I feel totally unprepared for adulthood. Not in the "oh I'm not ready to leave behind fun/hanging out with friends/etc" but because I never had that in the first place. I spent all of high school with one friend, I spent my two failed years in college completely alone (to the extent that my roommate literally refused to speak to me or even have live in the same room in our one-bedroom apartment), I have spent the intervening seven goddamn years with barely any human contact except for my parents, who treated my like an idiot or a child (and happily set me up for failure again by intervening at the lowest point of my life to date and steering me toward a degree I hated because that's the only way they would help me pay for school), and said friend from high school whom I have almost nothing in common with anymore. I'm only now coming to realize how abnormal my life has been and just how deeply I withdrew from everything after the second time I was kicked out of school, I'm closing in on 30 without ever having progressed past about 15 emotionally, and I just came back from a therapist's appointment where I went over the same stuff as the therapist I had over a decade ago. Fan-fucking-tastic.

wow I don't think I've ever done a truth bomb before! I do genuinely believe that though. It's one of those things that you think can't possibly be so until you experience it. In my experience.

i'll be 39 next month and my life hasn't really begun i guess

Telephone Thing, while the situations you describe are perhaps unusual, they're not abnormal by any means.

i dunno - there are good things about one's 20s - even if those things are getting stupid mistakes out of the way so you learn from them and don't make them again (or don't make them as stupidly) when you get older and the stakes are higher. Also wearing supercute vintage clothes. Take advantage of your ability to wear them (and get them for cheap) when you are in your 20s.

got it! wrote back with my real email address and some useful info.
i am 35 and still wearing the vintage clothes i wore in my 20s. never give up!

i can wear some of them, but my size 8 leather pleated miniskirt days are over.

corey, I just wanna point out to you that 23 isn't even at the starting gate yet. I know it's rough times sometimes but seriously, you gotta take my word for this, you won't even remember 23 in about 3 years. you are just getting your feet under you. so, get them feet under you. my life did not really begin before I was 26, fwiw.

This is so true. I remember feeling the same way though -- I was seriously depressed/suicidal from about 23-26. I felt like I had no future or prospects at all, but I did end up being wrong.

me too. i have never been so happy to be wrong in my life.

i'm 27, going back to school, and kinda feel like my life is just beginning. school is cool!

You know you're right, it is. I need to stop bitching and acknowledge this.

If there's any benefit to getting older, it's the realization that you don't need to justify yourself to anyone. I still make bad decisions and feel like I haven't gotten my life together, but I have gotten pretty good at handling things, digging myself out, and just being flexible. On the other hand I'm just as curious and iconoclastic now as I was 20 years ago (if not more so).

TS: going through the emotional wringer of trying to figure yourself out in your 20s vs. being in your 40s and surrounded by folks who complain about being old and missing the person they were in their 20s.