# Struggling with it...



## DustyDog (Jul 12, 2016)

I'm too damned complex, I know it. I've struggled my whole life. Didn't socialize as a kid because I was not capable of engaging with little boys in sports - my eyesight didn't allow me to follow fast action close to my face, so the other boys sent me home. Wasn't distraught over that - my parents did have many friends, so I had no role models telling me that it was a "supposed to be" thing. But this did mean that I didn't learn socializing in the usual way.

So, after 15 years of marriage, I realized that the messages I received over and over were that she wanted less of me around, less intimacy, less time together, etc. Mind you, this was when we were spending but 45 minutes a week together! She was even talking this way when I was out of the counrty for two weeks at a time. She even proposed that we should purchase separate houses so we didn't have to be together and yet enjoy being married - my idea of marriage is to increase time together.

But, having no social skills means I suck at making new friends.

Given a lack of feeling socially connected (while wishing I was), where did my self-identify come from? Work. I was good at coordinating teams, I was "the engineer who designed people systems". But all engineering has a technical backing to it, and I was not able to keep up with it and now am 25 years behind the times...and unlikely, in the years between now and nominally forced retirement, to be able to learn enough to once again engage. Over the years, bits and pieces of work became hobbies. In those times when I was experiencing depression due to absence of people, I could at least busy my hands and brain with designing stuff, building it and seeing it work - and making a trace of income selling over the web.

I knew when I quit work that I'd miss the people, and I hoped the marriage could be recovered, but years of counseling only elicited, from her, an insistence that what she wanted was totally normal - and a statement that she chose to get married for the most common reasons - because a woman is supposed to, and for money. She stood by her ground - this is how I was raised, and it's the only proper way to be. When I said I'm sorry to be intolerant, but I'm not willing to stay married under these conditions, she was so in shock that she didn't believe it. She said, via text, not so long ago, that she really only believed it when she saw the judge's signature.

Against my wishes, the judgement requires the house be sold. It's been purchased and I'm moving out.

So, I can't afford to buy a house, and without income, can't qualify for a mortgage, and don't have many years left before companies really won't hire me. Heck, due to atrophied skills, they won't anyway. I can probably get minimum wage jobs as a greeter, but I doubt seriously such a job would engage me the way I want. Plus, with my suck-ass time management, a 40 hour a week job mostly stops me from doing anything else.

So I'm living with a girlfriend and her kids. I'm not sure we're well-matched, but we're supplying each others' needs in a way or two...I have a place to sleep, eat and hang my clothes for cheap and she has a man in the house, which makes her feel safer, and I'm transport for the kids' activities. But - they have filled the house corner to corner and there's no space for me.

Who am I? Where do I go? What do I do?

Today it's hitting hard, as I haul yet another truckload of my former hobbies and passions to the dump.

I know that materials don't define me, but these materials were not for looking at, they were tools and materials used for creativity...still, they're just materials.

I'm lost. I know I must be more than my physical impact on the world, but what am I? What would be the point of continuing?


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## Ynot (Aug 26, 2014)

Not sure why you quit working or why you feel you can only get a minimum wage job, but your first course of action would be to get a job and start making money. The get your own place. It seems the only reason you are with this GF is to serve a purpose and you really don't enjoy being there. So next step it get your own place, so that you are not being constantly influenced by anyone else. Then take some time to find out who you are and what you want. To do that, you will need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and blaming everything that has happened to you on your past. Your post seems to say, regardless of whether you realize it or not, that you actually do have an inkling of what you want and who you are. But you will never discover all of it until you stop allowing your past to define you.


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## Betrayedone (Jan 1, 2014)

Yes, a job of any sort is a necessity for you. Try to dust off and improve your old skills or move in another direction. We all have something we're good at. Relax, if you make an effort, in time, the answer will find you.


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## cc48kel (Apr 5, 2017)

Do not take your passions and hobbies to the dump... Or at least keep some of them for yourself-- it's a part of you!! I agree you shouldn't have stopped working-- work is the best thing for you. Sitting at home wondering what happened is not good!! I know you have a place to sleep, eat and part of a closet BUT get your resume together and start sending them out-- you need a job. You need to be with people and try your best. I'm not a very social person either BUT I feel so much better when I'm at work knowing that I'm making a difference. I smile more too!!


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