After I turned 30 and nearly every year since then, I have always felt this pull of sadness, regret, and the fear of being un-needed. Actually, the latter was always a thread throughout my entire life. It’s like a pall that hovered over me every time I got close to something I’ve wanted to own in my life. It’s not a fear of failure, for those who fail; learn. It’s as if the things that I want always seemed to go to someone else no matter how often I worked toward it.
Wanted a lead in a play, went to the more attractive male.
Wanted to have the better singing part in choir, went to the more popular kid.
Wanted to be a manager, the company declared bankruptcy.
Full-time positions opened, went to the new guy.
Wanted a job with my parish, went to someone else.
Over and over again my life felt like a great disappointment. I do believe that if you want something in life you have to work for it but after many, many, many years of trying; the goal I’ve wanted never was reached. It’s the feeling of God putting a carrot in front of me and continuing to pull it away or placing further than my arms could reach.
I have had so many disappointments in my life that after nearly 40 years of them I’ve given up on goals. I have turned my nose at dreams. I no longer care to hold on to them. Why bother? Right? Someone suggested that I try this website in hope that it will help me cope with this or overcome these feelings. But what good will it do when things are placed on your heart that you know they’ll never happen anyway?
I would like to answer some of these things from my own experiences. Obviously you and I don’t know each other so I won’t assume to know all of your difficulties and struggles from a single post, so with that being said, here are my two cents.
I’m sorry to hear this. In my experience, a lot of people carry with them an almost unconscious fear of aging. We know our health will probably start to decline as our bodies become less resilient. We don’t have as much energy as we used to. Our metabolism might slow down, etc. We will all age at some point in time and since we all have but one life to live, that can definitely be scary and I think all of these thoughts and feelings are pretty legit and probably affect more people than you realize.
I can definitely see how you would feel this way, especially if time and time again, the events in your life all seem to point in that direction. I will touch more on this later in my response, but know that I hear you.
This, unfortunately, is the sad truth about performance art. Theater is very much a visual medium, along with stuff like movies and TV shows. These productions will generally favor a better looking lead because the people producing these things want their production to be as pleasing as possible on every possible level. Im sorry you didn’t get the part.
Yep, popularity does have a way of seeping into places where it doesn’t belong and this applies to so many things, not just choir. I think that its very unfortunate that people make decisions based on popularity rather than talent and that in many ways this can become quite troublesome because it is easier to pass up the rightful person for a job which can certainly change the course of a production, business, or even government.
This sucks, plain and simple, but to say that was in any way under your control is absurd. We can never really know for sure what kind of job security we have and we never know what tomorrow will bring. You can have your dream job making decent money for a good performance and still potentially lose it all for something coming out of left field, like Covid for example causing tons of businesses to go under. (Not saying that was the cause in your case, just throwing it out there.) All we can do is hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Yea, I can see how this would rub you the wrong way. Is it possible that the new guy was better qualified or had more experience? As humans we can sometimes forget that other people are just as complex as we are and have lives and experiences of their own that we don’t even know about. It is easy to jump to conclusions and think, hey, I have tenure so I should get the job, but thats a slippery slope because then we get back in that gray area of popularity vs the right man for the job. I hope that makes sense.
I feel this.
I came from a broken and abusive family which led me to have zero self esteem or confidence. I was always under someone else’s strict orders and so I never knew how to make decisions for myself. This ultimately set me up for failure in young adulthood and I had to learn the hard way to pull myself out of that, and for a good 8 years I was absolutely worthless. I couldn’t hd a job, I was couch surfing, I never knew when my next meal would come. So I totally understand. But I got through it, and I believe we can all overcome our challenges.
This is where perseverance becomes so important and the road begins to fork. Do we keep at that struggle even though time after time if seems to go nowhere? Would it not be better to just quit and use that energy in other parts of your life? Only you know for sure in your case. Life is so complicated that it can often be hard to have a clear right answer for situations like this and the best we can do is either make the right choice or learn from the wrong choice.
Wrong.
I look at it this way. The only true end to pursuance is when you stop pursuing. Even if you take baby steps towards your goals, you are at least moving in the right direction. Do your due diligence, put in the time to gain experience, embrace knowledge and learning. If you want that goal/dream/etc bad enough, it is worth trying. It is worth failing and learning from those failures. Or, if its not worth it, then it comes down to what we really want. Because really, it sounds like what you want is to stop fighting. Don’t get me wrong, I get that too. Sometimes the right choice for our own mental and physical health is to stop fighting. But once you stop fighting, you absolutely guarantee that you won’t reach your goal. As for this -
This is defeat. Knowing that something will never happen is admitting defeat and will often become a self fulfilling prophesy.
In my life I have gone from being miserable, depressed and aimless, to starving and hitting rock bottom to forcing myself to do better - to love myself, find my worth and realize my potential. Im now married, working a job I love and just closed on a house and I can tell you what the most important factor was. I could have easily given up when I was literally starving and not able to hd a job. It would’ve been easy to just lay down and die. But as hard as it was to pull myself back up, I clung to the mindset that, as long as I want something bad enough, I will eventually get it. And I did. It only took 13 years to go from homeless and starving to having a family, a career and a home. Was it worth it? Sure. But it sure as hell wasn’t easy.
As soon as you give up on yourself and your future you may as well be done. If you won’t fight for what you want, who will?