I’ll go first…after 10 years of speculating in the market (read: gambling in high risk assets) I realized I shouldn’t ever touch a brokerage account in my lifetime. A monkey would have made better choices than I did. Greed has altered the course of life many times over. I am at an age where I may recover from my actions over the decades, but it has taken its toll. I am frugal and have a good head on me, but having such impulsivity in financial instruments was not how I envisioned my adulthood. Its a bitter pill to swallow, since money is livelihood of my family, but I need to “invest” all I have into relationships, meaningful moments, and fulfilling hobbies.
That just meaning well or having good intentions, are not enough. You need to actually show up and make time for the things, and people, you value.
Thinking of a great friend who had the courage to break up with me, and tell me straight up it’s because I was a bad friend to them.
Great post!
Pardon my language, though I heard this in an interview with Jimmy Carr, and it rather highlights this for me quite well:
I’m paraphrasing, though it was something like “if you’ve seen five cunts before noon, you’re the cunt”.My sapphic brain wasn’t tuned to understand that quote properly at first. Instead of seeing an insult, I thought, “Wow, that sounds like a busy, but amazing, morning.”
This connect deserves a ⭐, just because 😊
For me, it was “saying no doesn’t make me a bad person.” I was raised around extremely Christian people who emphasized that you should be there for everyone, even at the expense of self.
The problem is, people eventually take advantage of you. Also, when you finally say “no” to them, they act as though you’re a terrible person.
I had this recently. My parents wanted me to make a full hour round trip drive across town to pick them up in the middle of the night so they could save $50 on a taxi. I said, “No,” as I have kids to look after now, and my mom launched into how I’m not family first anymore and after all the things she did for me as a kid, she can’t depend on me to pick her up.
I stuck to my guns though. They conned my brother with the same story, but I set a boundary.
Wow, the “family first” remark, while you’re taking care of your kids, gets me. That’s so familiar.
It’s as if people hearing “no” from you, when you would normally just cave in and do whatever was requested, is an act of aggression from people. It’s strange… they become so hateful.
Good on you for sticking with your boundaries!
This is similar to “be a soldier and suck it up”. I used to keep my objections to myself and go along with things. This doesn’t make your feelings go away, instead it makes resentment build up along with passive aggression. I now speak up but do so reasonably nicely.
I try to remind myself that when I do say yes, they’re never quite as happy/appreciative/etc. as I expected or hoped for.
I try to please the people but the people aren’t even pleased, ugh.
“Yo, you could be at least a little happier and grateful about it, you know I could be {doing something else that I actually enjoy}, I’m just doing this for you!”
I once had an Excedrin get stuck in my throat sideways. That was a pretty uncomfortable several hours of my life.
That trauma is not an identity and if I want to grow as a person I have to resolve that trauma and let go of the past.
that ending a relationship that isn’t working is also my responsibility, instead of postponing it, thinking “this time things will be alright” or “if i break up, everyone will think wrong of me” and letting dissatisfaction grow inside me, turning myself into an *sshole.
i’ve recently had to accept that my neurodivergence makes managers, supervisors, etc. uneasy about me despite my stellar track record and the sole reason why i was able to maintain continuous employment was because of my high demand skill set; which means that employment will become increasingly difficult as i continue to age.
At least your quirks allowed you to create a track record that was seen as stellar by others.
My own Voltron of ADD and Asperger’s allows me to do impressive things. But without any significant ability to monetize those traits or for it to be visibly profitable to someone else, it’s been a much more impactful hell on my employability.
I’ve come to hate how capitalism only “works well” for the masses who stumble and fumble through life, but who can easily conform to the required soul-sucking shape of profitability for someone else. People are more than just how much profit can be squeezed from them, and can provide back to civilization a lot more than what the current capitalistic structures parasitize out of them.
There are other economic structures that are much more humane and planet-friendly, but as a civilization we have been indoctrinated into seeing those frameworks as being “irredeemably evil” simply because prior “implementations” used them as a veneer of legitimacy over despotic authoritarian regimes.
I qualify as an aspie too and I would likely be in the same boat were it not for my software development skills.
LOL 😂 I am also a software developer. 30 years in almost every sector of IT short of 3D animation and games development.
And no, AI hallucinates too gratuitously for me, and just pisses the hell outta me. It’s worse than a gaggle of juniors in terms of all the extra work it generates.
This field is so incredibly lousy w people like us that it makes me marvel at the ones w the kind of job security that I crave because it means that their hyper focus not only aligns w the company’s profit line but they’ve also managed to have a tenure that steered clear of enough clueless neurotypicals to keep them from getting fired or on the chopping block for a layoff.
Lol people like you will be useless in a few years. Its a tool, use it like one.
You can do everything right that people taught you. But you only start living when you make mistakes, fuck up, and find the places where you belong, and a picture perfect life doesn’t bring you happiness; it’s rather shallow and lonely.
That paired with the realization that my mental disabilities will make me lonely for the rest of my life and there’s only so much I can do about it without having breakdowns.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.”
- Jean-Luc Picard
That I actually do have a bad temper and do get angry very easily, that my anger does not justify my verbal/physical reactions (nor was I ‘right’ just because I was angry) and that these reactions will hurt those I care about/those I don’t care about but still didn’t deserve my violence, which is a surefire way to end up in jail (perhaps) and in Hell (more likely).
For everyone who has similar issues, try to remember two things:
- Ambiguous behaviour does not mean aggressive behaviour.
- The flesh is weak. If you, in your anger, start a fight and perhaps just push someone and they crack their head and die/lose function, you’ll never live it down, you will always be the guy who killed someone in anger (and not even righteous anger, you’re just temperamental). And it can happen very quickly too! A good man cannot live with that, only a hell-bound one can, so either you’ll be oppressed by your guilt or you’ll realize you’ve lost your humanity and you’re a full on psycho.
I needed to read this
If you’re gonna break the law, be smart about it. In the time it takes you to do it the right way, you probably will have these feelings pass. If not… get that shitter.
Since no one on here will ever know me…
It’s accepting that I have autism and that having autism is ok. My mom used “autistic” as an insult against me, the first time I remember was from age 5 as an attempt to control behavior she saw as undesirable. Running circles outside until I wore the grass out and flapping my hands about was something I needed to feel ashamed about according to her. And so I hid that and everything else she criticized so hard that I couldn’t accept that the reason I struggled so hard with a lot of things in my life wasn’t because I was just some innate failure but because I had an unaddressed condition that was she not only refused to help with but actively made worse.
To this day I still cannot do things like make eye contact, or tolerate being touched. But I’ve learned to not only accept myself for who I am, but accept that little boy who never understood why his own mother never seemed to be able to love him.
I have to force myself to make eye contact when talking. I usually look away when talking, it helps me think. Some people think you aren’t being sincere but oh well.
💔
The realization of how truely alone I am when everything started collapsing after our house was sold and how my parents who supposedly were suppose to love me, don’t love me and how I do have daddy issues because of this and I am not exactly as strong mentally as I thought of myself to be.
That I come from a highly dysfunctional family and my entire personality is a reaction to them. I knew they were dysfunctional but I was in denial about their impact. Connecting with my true self had been a bitch.
That life is truly a neverending struggle. Sure, you get to enjoy some of that struggle, and you can take a break every now and then. Nevertheless, the only time you’re truly free from it is when you’re dead.
No, I don’t plan to end it immaturely. Please don’t put me on suicide watch. I still have my people to take care of. 😅
Me too, thanks.
Life would be boring and meaningless without some struggle. Would you like to play a game where you just constantly win without even trying? Boring.
There’s a difference between “win without even trying” and “barely holding up”
Of course
I truly wish you the least boring and most meaningful life possible. May you gag on your own medicine for the rest of your years.
I guess it sounded harsher than I intended. Some people get way more struggle than their share and I wish it wasn’t that way. What I posted above is what I tell myself sometimes when I’m feeling exhausted. Life truly is a never ending struggle, but I try to not fall into despair over it.
That I didn’t know who I was. My lack of self awareness hampered my growth trajectory, my maturity, and relationships. My first failed marriage was a pinnacle of this issue. Though, fast forward 5 years, I’m a vastly different person, know who I am and what I want and where I want to end up. I feel guilty for my ex wife and the impact I had on them. I hope they’re happier where ever they may be.
That sounds super healthy actually. Good outlook to have. We all make mistakes, what matters is if we learned from them.
Self discovery - the journey of a lifetime
Know thyself…congrats. I can say with certainty that the guilt of affecting ones close to you will never leave you. Light comes from darkness.
That choosing a relationship with someone who is monkeybranching into the relationship with you directly from another relationship is you allowing someone in your life who is fundamentally dishonest and manipulative. It’s one thing to be casually dating in general, and just finding someone you click with and ending it with the people you are casually dating, but entering a relationship with someone who pursues you even though they’re in an ostensibly committed relationship is choosing to accept someone who is really not a good person, because they will just do whatever they want and eventually hurt you without a qualm too. Tolerating any of this means you are tolerating abuse, really.
Unfortunately he didn’t tell me this fact until 18 months into it, but that should have been what made me realize that he wasn’t trustworthy and leave then.
Also committing from the get go and falling in love? That’s just also not valuing yourself. You’re just looking for someone to fit into your life because you don’t love yourself enough to wait and take your time and get to know someone, and you’re afraid to be alone and have nobody to care for you. And I did all of that, because I was immature, completely without any idea of how to make it in life alone or cope alone, and I thought that was all I deserved and was the only way to be safe. And it was all wrong.
