Dear Felix:

Back sooner than I thought I would be. In this post,  I will quote you and comment. You are welcome to respond and we can communicate further.

“I punish myself.. I’ve forgiven myself”- You didn’t forgive yourself yet. If you forgave yourself, you wouldn’t be punishing yourself.

“Lost my wife because I was weak and broke down during hard times… I miss my best friend (ex wife)”- if she left you because you were weak and broken down (and not because, let’s say, you were angry and abusive)- then she was not your friend, was she?

“Ate away my pain, gained 80 lbs, which I mostly lost”- congrats, there are lots and lots and lots of people who would love to be able to say: I mostly lost 80 pounds!

“Could have been making high six figures by now”- there are lots of people making mid five figures who are content in life and lots of people who have made high six and even seven figures income and yet felt life was not worth living.

“I am 43 starting from almost scratch”- you don’t have to follow a timeline. The only real start line and finish line are birth and death. You don’t have to achieve X by the time you are 20, and Y by the time you are 30, etc. Society is not that preplanned and organized in practice.

“Just wasted last 15 years on doing nothing at all. Work-> TV->Smoke weed-> Sleep-> Repeat.. the anger and the shame won’t allow me to accomplish my goals now”- I am thinking that anger (and anxiety) and shame caused you to live that way for 15 years, before regret set in.

“I cannot turn back the clock”- imagine a person who had the best life imaginable.. and coming to old age, sick and unable, he can’t turn the clock back. It must hurt a lot  to not be able to turn the clock back on a good life!

“PS. My family is pretty awful. Good people, but they treat me badly”- can’t have it both way, they cant be good people and be people who treat you badly.

“we are Jewish so can’t really cut off your family”- yes, you can. I know someone who did just that, Jewish and all.

“I just try to limit my interaction with them”- if your family is poison to you, a little poison is enough to get you sick.

“I am always alone no matter what I do”- that’s a problem, we humans are not able to be alone for too long without getting sick, it’s in our genetic makeup to be social, we are born that way.

“it’s been bad for such a long time that I feel like a gazelle that can no longer run away from the lion chasing it”- a lion chases a gazelle because it wants to eat it. Who is chasing you and for what purpose?

“I am tired. I just want some good news”- I want you to find some good news, and soon. I wonder what it might be.

anita