By every measure I am a failure

I am a 40 year old man and like the title says I've been a failure in all ways you can think. I haven't felt the touch of someone else in over 5 years. I am still working for minimum wage and it's not even full time. I have zero friends, only mild acquaintances who insist that I do shit with them when and only when THEY want to do shit. If I think of something I want to do they're always too busy. I'm literally living paycheck to paycheck and I have several bills outstanding that I can't even afford to pay a token amount towards. I owe almost $2K to Illinois due to an incomplete filing of my 2018 taxes, and I owe my last apartment complex $900 for repairs. I struggle to just feed myself so where is this money going to come from? I've also not been able to make any new friends because nobody responds to my events on every social media site imaginable. I want to badly to at least take my own death just to see how empty the funeral event will be.

Sorry you are feeling this badly @ThanosIsKing. I don't see your post coming from a person who's a failure. I see hurt and pain and worry about financial burdens.

I hope you can come up with a safe distraction, to at least for a while get off the looped thoughts. If there's an activity you enjoy can you try doing it without these friends who are letting you down? I don't know if that'd help right now, but maybe sometime.

When you're here, you're not alone.

I don't think that's true. You've been struggling financially and with personal relationships, a lot of people are in the same boat.

As far as I know you're not a moral failure. You're not responsible for genocide, etc. Being a moral success is the most important way you can succeed, as far as I'm concerned. It's also the least valued realm of success.

I would say you're living under pressure, but not a failure by any means. Taking life as you find it and making the best out of it that you can is something heroic. So it seems to me like you are living in a heroic way, it's just that it's been a rough ride.

It's been 5 goddamn years since I've meant anything to anyone. At least it's been that long since I've heard it told to me in a non-platonic way.

I wish there was. I play D&D once a month but our DM had some family stuff come up and had to cancel for August. Also there's my games corner which looks like this:


But none of them are being used!

I just want someone to hug me and tell me that my presence matters but nobody wants to because I don't really matter

@ThanosIsKing

Nice, that's a huge collection. If you could, what about finding a game that's a group type? Say, dragon boats, for one. Or a hiking group or geochaching group through your local community centre.

I know it's not solving anything, but a lot of us here seem to be not just alone, butalso lonely. I think it was @may71 who started a thread for virtual hugs. (if not, then my apologies)

Please take care of yourself and keep us posted.

Many rich people also don't have any friends or acquaintances.

And how much money you got doesn't say your worth or capacity as a human being.

I think life really depends on what dreams you got or what are your aspirations.

Honestly the money thing is the least of my worries but it is really high up there. I can't afford to pay a mere $3K in debts? How goddamn sad is that? No the.main part that has me depressed is the lack of real human contact. Like I said it's now been 5 years since anyone so much as touched me. I'm starting to doubt my own existence sometimes.

Another thing that has gotten me depressed is that nobody at work gives a fuck. I was forced to close on my own with zero backup, and I had to do it early because I had to catch my bus which stops running after 7pm. I felt abandoned and fucked over because nobody was willing to come in for one goddamn hour and help me out. I've never wanted do die more than I do now. No way out of this financial bullshit, nobody cares at work, and I have zero friends who give a shit.

I think you've mentioned that the boss' daughter likes you. There's some risk there, but it sounds like it might be worth it.
It's kind of typical to have coworkers who don't give a fuck. It's not something that is unique to you by any means.

There may be some jobs like, firefighting, where it's common for people to have stick-together and help each other out kind of culture, but it's a rare thing.

You matter

Hugs Thanos

Yeah, I mean she is funny and can make me laugh and is pretty cute but she is also literally almost half my age. Part of me feels creepy about it but another part of me has been listening to these influencers saying that the best part of life is having a family and helping expand the next generation and I know that most women my age are either aged out of having kids or already have kids and I'd hate to go into that situation and try to replace an existing father. I also don't know what I'd say that, as said before, wouldn't come across as extremely creepy.

If she's 20, she's an adult and she can make her own choices. If you like her and she likes you, I don't think there's a problem.

Besides this, it doesn't necessarily have to become a romantic thing if you don't want it to be.

I'm not necessarily a good source for relationship advice, I can just give you my 2 cents.

I don't think you have to force anything. It might be enough to just have the attitude that the door is not closed to getting to know her better.

I wish that we were there, or close enough to be a part of your life and to show that yes, you matter, you are a person that should feel good about yourself and that you have a reason. Like so many here and elsewhere it is sad that there is so much separation between us.

I can relate to you, being the same age, though there are also significant differences: I'm totally unemployed, I have no interest in relationships of any kind.

In any case, I understand what it's like to be so "far behind" and unaccomplished at this stage of life.

Do you ever feel that any kind or ambition you may possess is totally futile due to your age? Or simply a general, overwhelming sense of it being "too late"?

I'd say a mixture of both. The only real ambition I have now is trying to get as high in the umpire ranks as I can but like you said it feels a bit too late. The saving grace there is that a lot of the umpire community is made up of retirees so it doesn't make my desires any less insane. It's also looked on by, well, all of my family as something that's totally immature. I'm also being pressured by my minimum wage job to take as few games as possible, but I just can't. So when speaking about a career I'm in the "ambition is just completely futile" camp.

Then we get into relationships and friendships. Here I feel that overwhelming sense of "too late". As soon as my parents divorced at 10 I became completely directionless and withdrawn. Everyone I tried making friends with had that air of "this would be acceptable 5 years ago". Like I never was forced to spend time outside or sent to summer camp to develop those interpersonal skills because my mom was completely focused on her own career to the detriment of my life, and my dad was trying to be a "party dad" because of the limited time my brother and I were given with him. I've never forgiven my mom for the divorce because I have become 100% convinced that I'm in order to further her career to the point where she was a university professor, she completely forgot about actually raising us. If she wasn't so self-absorbed and narcissistic I would have a much better life, and I wouldn't be on several SSRIs for the rest of my life. The only person who came close to giving me some semblance of normal was my dad's girlfriend of about 7 years, up until he cheated on her and crashed her world in IIRC 2013. I almost killed the fucker, no lie. But before that I never was given a sit-down to contemplate my life goals (if I could go back in time I'd convince my 20 year old self to go into trade school since my dad was willing to help pay for that or a small commuter school. I took the latter). Another consequence of not having a more social upbringing is that I never figured out how to start talking to ANYONE. I tried a girlfriend senior year of high school. And the future people that tried showing me kindness of any sort in school made me borderline stalk them (I remember a college "friend" who went into stand-up comedy had me wanting to support him by showing up at ALL his shows. NOT HEALTHY). All of this comes too late for me to do anything about it I feel.

Just would like to say your not alone. In today's age things are different then our parents and grandparents time like the internet more isolation started and covid even more isolation. Today we got to do more then just walk out side to meet someone we got to arrange for it with groups and meet ups even online dating. Try to join a church or yoga or something. We are always here for you too!