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

Dear Felix:

“I am tired. I just want.. something good or fun to happen. It’s been a long time since I felt anything but pain… I am just so tired.. I would do anything for something good, fun, exciting to happen”-

– I wonder what that “something good, fun, exciting” could be for you. Maybe you can make it happen today, or tomorrow?

anita

Felix
It sounds like your struggling.  Their is a time for everything including reflection, sadness, uncertainty even the dark night of the soul. Perhaps this is a time of waiting and embracing uncertainty, life mystery?

“Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.” —Soren Kierkegaard.

“It seems a movement from certitude to doubt and through doubt to acceptance of life’s mystery is necessary in all encounters, intellectual breakthroughs, and relationships.”  “To hold the full mystery of life is always to endure its other half, which is the equal mystery of death and doubt. To know anything fully is always to hold that part of it which is still mysterious and unknowable. In our youth certainty elevates most anxiety on the conscious level, which may be why we cling to it so.”  -CAC

Growth always involves a dying

Sue Monk Kidd talks about the power of waiting.

What has happened to our ability to dwell in unknowing, to live inside a question and coexist with the tensions of uncertainty? Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? What has happened to patient unfolding, to endurance? These things are what form the ground of waiting. And if you look carefully, you’ll see that they’re also the seedbed of creativity and growth—what allows us to do the daring and to break through to newness. . . .

Creativity flourishes not in certainty but in questions. Growth germinates not in tent dwelling but in upheaval. Yet the seduction is always security rather than venturing, instant knowing rather than deliberate waiting.

Perhaps this is a time of waiting. A waiting which isn’t passive as it requires calm intention and open engagement with life as it shows up. No need for answers, the questions may be enough.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.
T. S. Eliot

Hello Felix,

You are a survivor.  You have come through so much.  Your post is a message to the Universe that you need some help.  It’s OK to ask the Universe to help you.  Call upon your guardian angel.  Ask for help in releasing your negative feelings (guilt, regrets).  As well as sending love out to the Universe, send some back to yourself.  Love yourself exactly as you are today.  Love yourself for just ‘being’.

Love and Light

Peggy

Dear Felix; Maybe you can get back your confidence and the love for yourself, which will then let you have true forgiveness of the things that happened in the past.  Since the past is past and you cannot change it, you need to stay in the present and try to let those things go.  Have you heard of “The 4 Agreements”?   Be impeccable with your word. Don’t take anything personally. Don’t make assumptions. Always do your best.  don Miguel Ruiz.  Take some time to study things like this and you will find tools to lead you forward and it might even lead you to the path that you are seeking.  True Love, Faith in yourself, and Forgiveness or just the letting go of the things that cause you pain.  You a child of god, you deserve to be here.