suicide

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.

one of the weird and great things about life is that you can find fulfillment and happiness at almost any time at almost any age, one of the unfortunate things is that it requires a lot of effort, but its really really worth it

you can't afford not to go college

oh God, Corey, i wish i knew what to tell you. except that 23 (that is your age, right?) is wayyyy too young to just give up. it may seem hopeless, and my answer may seem glib, but i so wish that i had the problems i had when i was 23 right now.

anyway, and a bit off-topic: I went through this with a good friend who's 26 and thinks she's stuck in her current career path (and it's not a bad career path to be stuck on FWIW). she kept telling me, "time is running out!!" i kept telling HER, "believe me, you have PLENTY of time."

dunno if that helps you, corey and TT. but believe me, the both of you still have plenty of time left.

If there's any benefit to getting older, it's the realization that you don't need to justify yourself to anyone.

'nother truth bomb. I'm a 27 year old college graduate with a low paying job trying to figure out how the hell I'm going to pay rent (due in 9 days! fuck!) and trying to figure out if I can save money by making my own homemade ramen recipes but I got this way by doin' it my way and despite the major financial stresses I'm still a happy dude because the path I'm following is mine and it's pretty fulfilling thus far. No matter how lame consequences of irresponsible life decisions might be, what's the worst that could happen? You die on the streets? If you're considering suicide already, why not just ride that out? You won't be disappointed.

I don't want to be in my twenties at all!! No one takes you seriously! Getting older is a terrible reason to be depressed. I mean we are ALL going to die some day, there is nothing you can do about it. That is so horrifying that you should stay active and fit if it bothers you that much.

good to see this thread. may i vent for a moment? things are not good here. like eisbar, i am supposedly an atty. but i had a separation from my lawyer job in april, and there's no replacement job in sight. now i am working at a call center 6 nights/wk. i'm fortunate to have any job. but it barely pays expenses. and my cashloans run out of forebearance in two months.

i am also terribly, terribly homesick for nj/nyc. there's not money for a visit, and moving is out of the question - even if i could get my family to go along w/it, i am licensed here. there's no reciprocity for a few years. i know a few people locally, but am working nights and never get a chance to see them. the one time i got myself to a show these past few months, i sat in a corner by myself, unable to bring myself to talk to anyone.

the pressure's getting to be almost overwhelming. i went to law school to make a decent living for my family, and it turns out that i'm not making any more money, plus there's about 100 g's in student loans to pay off. i am starting to think of law school as the worst mistake i've made in a lifetime of mistakes. and i don't see a way out. just overwhelming, crippling depression.

right now, the ONLY things keeping me from taking serious steps to end it are a) my kids - i have two amazing daughters and the thought of putting them through something like that is just too much; b) if i kick it, my father-in-law gets stuck with the student loan bill; and c) the notion of death is very, very scary to me. so i stick it out. but fuck, it isn't easy.

check your e-mails, Corey and Mike :-)

But, I gotta add: it is only money. People survive not having it. People lose all of it and the rugs out from under their feet. But many of those people do manage to get back on their feet, eventually.

― ljagljana (kkvgz), Friday, May 21, 2010 8:42 AM (4 months ago) Bookmark

Any advice re. the reverse situation? (I have some money, but right this moment I have powerful doubts regarding my ability to continue earning my living.) Things may (probably will) turn out for the best in the long term, but right now all my worries are hanging over my weekend.

are you worried because you won't be working or because you hate your job passionately?

Both, actually. (I don't know for a fact that the meeting requested for Tuesday will be me getting dismissed, but....) I hate the job, but I'm afraid of pissing off the agency that placed me there.

is this a job that you could relatively easy find another one of again? i mean, are you a bee surgeon or in IT or something?

I'm not trying to be antagonistic btw -- just asking questions :)

(Thanks for responding--around ILX I seem to be Tha Threadkilla.) I work for a specialized temp agency. I'm also on the rolls of two competing agencies, and there are other agencies in this market, but right now I'm in the depths of depression and fear, and thus am mindful of the several months of underemployment that preceded this assignment. For that matter I have one solid and several less-solid reasons why the job is a bad fit for me, but....

I'm just thinking that maybe this could be a very exciting time for you rather than a time when you are thinking about suicide. i mean, for real. i am kind of an optimist and even cornily so, but i'm not stupid and i'm not even that far beyond pragmatic on the general spectrum. i just like to look for potential bright spots and this sort of sounds like one to me.

i also realize that i am an internet stranger who doesn't know anything close to the whole story, so please disregard if i am way off base here

just shooting for the stars

No, no, thanks for responding. Just this morning I was feeling positively cheerful as I was walking in a park. Then I get home from my vacation and find that e-mail re. Tuesday, and....

Oh man, you're totally gonna be ok. You knew it! You know it.

( i am really tired and gotta sleep, but i hope that you feel better and i know that you will!)

fuck suicide but.

i think about it all the time.

life sucks.

it really does.

u know when yesterday u were all 'please can my friends stop dying' well imagine other ppl thinking that abt u - us included :)

fortitude, unity and all that

LJ otm. I think about it all the time, too, but when I imagine how that would make my mom feel I get really mad at myself for even letting it enter my mind.