u/SouthMeal7365

36/M I fucked up too many times to count. Should have pursued Graphic Design/Visual Communications. I was inducted into the National Technical Honor's Society for it in high school. Told myself that I just wasn't interested in it... wasn't thinking of money/career. Now I have 0 degrees, 0 skills, and 0 ambition.

Feel like there are more people my age and above who, like myself, have zero skills and are too apathetic, and mentally atrophied, feel incapable and lost... but are so drowning in miserable anehedonia that they can't be bothered to type up a post.

The modest life I imagined in my younger years (hidden, because why would anyone care? It's skippable. It's personally almost cathartic to write out though, sad too):

>!I seriously thought that I'd wind up living in a city with weirdos like me, working any rinky-dink job to pay the bills while making experimental and/or noise music and maybe playing shows for fun... silkscreen shirts and art on the side with a girlfriend. That's how simple and low-bar my ideal life was lol... really didn't want much. Instead, I found myself socially inept, living in an area that I have never felt more out of place in with my geriatric father, jobless and completely friendless.!<

I slipped into deep NEETdom in 2020 and feel like I passed the rubicon. My dad is 76...

Too apathetic and anhedonic to pick anything up, and too stupid to figure a way out.

Turning 37 in a couple months. Living at home. No degree. No skills. No ambition. Depressive envy. Inferiority complex.

Feel blank/empty, unintelligent, drained, body aches.

I've always dealt with social anxiety, always uncomfortable. Detached from humanity or I what it is to be human.

I used to just want to move to an area that I felt comfortable to settle in, and hopefully find some weird people to make non-traditional music with in the experimental or noise and punk vein (no actual skill necessary to start, and all of the freedom). I still do, but I no longer feel it... I feel despair.

Ideally I had hoped to end up with a similar girlfriend that wanted to try to make money together (e.g. silk screen art/shirts to sell).

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I freaked out on acid in Boston in 2007, in the dorms of my first few months of school for audio engineering (something I never should have even pursued since I am terrible at math... wasn't thinking of that at the time, mainly wanted to find "my people"). I was kicked out.

Worked at a call center and paid off what I owed the school. Stupidly signed up for audio school in Cali and dropped out after two months because the commute was stressful, and I realized how deeply fucked up I feel socially.

Went back home to work at the call center again.

(Starting to feel too lazy to type out more of my story)

Skipping over my twenties, will say I went through car theft (twice, last time by an older adopted family member), alcoholism and tons of drugs, being used by the "love of my life" and eviscerated of any love, workplace gaps (more call center work, caregiving too), lived out of car, did clinical studies for money to avoid traditional work.

Social ineptitude/discomfort and depression have been the bane of my existence. I've seen posts of people with social anxiety or AVPD or Major Depression or Bipolar etc where they have friends and college degrees, jobs, married etc and are struggling; I never relate, and I never see anyone else my age in a similar pathetic situation.

A few times now I have been suspected of bipolar disorder, and recently I might have experienced mania. I lost my cat during the episode and it's severely destroyed any "progress" that I thought I was making towards getting out of long-term unemployment.

5 years ago I moved down to Tennessee to help my dad move out of Tennessee because he made a mistake moving down in 2020. I was in a relationship that wanted to move somewhere new too, so it was supposed to be like killing two birds to find the perfect home. Instead my dad took the help for granted, spent the time mocking me and wasting everyone's time; so much time went by that my relationship ended then I got stuck down here. It's been 5 years of absolute dread.

I quit drinking in 2024, thought it'd magically fix my life especially since I was trying Effexor again... I mean, it's better to not have it in my life but I am still unemployed and completely empty. It's felt like my life is over. I have no real skills or confidence, no talents, my cognitive abilities seem non-existent. I feel very out of place where I am living (I do not fit into the southern culture, feel no connection).

My life has felt like a traumatic rollercoaster. I never felt like a loser or failure or moron until I got stuck down here living with my dad (who will pass away any day now it seems, so that gives me anxiety too... )

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This all is incomplete, gaps and sorta all over the place, maybe. Haven't written my thoughts out in a long time.

I accidentally really fucked my life up. Now I lack all ambition to ever try again, cannot see a future whatsoever and am stuck spinning out like a tire in mud.