An Absence of Good Things

Lately I've realised that although my depression is fuelled by having internalised my dad's anger and even taking moral responsibility for it, there is a further, deeper level: I have had a life with some strong negative experiences but with very few positive ones.

I think an abscence of experience, and an absence of positive experiences

My parents almost never went on holiday or to social occasions. Even when he had the opportunity, my dad refused to go on holiday or to family gatherings, even just to support my mam. He refused to partake at Christmas, and even absented himself from his own 25th Wedding Anniversary party.

I suspect my dad had all the problems I had, of depression, of low self-esteem, and so on, and he imposed them on my outgoing formerly confident mother, and ingrained them into me.

In 50 years I have done very little. I don't mean to say "achieved", I mean "done".

The little things one does in one's teens, in one's twenties, and so on through the decades, which build confidence and a sense of competence, I never did. I never had a girlfriend, I was unemployed for years, I never left home, and in 40 years I made only a handful of friends and even most of those I let lapse because I thought they didn't really want to know me.

I know now what was and is wrong, but I don't know what to do.

I feel numbed to all but sadness and dread. I'm managing to lose weight which is my one achievement at the moment, but I not acheiving it through hope but by having deliberately engineered a situation in which the shame I feel motivates, because I know the keeping the regard of a person I value will keep me losing weight.

I have no sense that there is anything good at the end of this or of anything I do, because nothing good came to me when I tried in my earlier years.

And now I'm so frightened that my health is failing and that the empty and sorrowful life I've had is all the life I will have before I die.