Feel like I have wasted my life

How do you get past the pain of that thought? I can be having a pretty good day, and just one thought can set me off crying no matter how good I am feeling. I feel like my life has been such a waste. It hasn't really hit me until the last few years how alone I have been my whole life. I spent all of my teenage years and early twenties hiding in my room playing video games. I started college a few years ago and it has been a struggle for me, so it's taken me a lot longer to finish. I still have two years left, I am hoping to be graduated by the time I am 30. That's the part that is really hitting me. I'm going to be 30 in two years.
Everyone seems to say their teenage years and early adult years were their "best years", I've spent 30 years alone, never going out on weekends, and never celebrating birthdays or holidays due to having no friends. The holidays (and my birthday) this past year have particularly been hell for me, primarily because I thought things were going to be different, but it turns out they were 100x more painful than usual because my only friend (who I managed to meet in college a year ago), and first boyfriend (which lasted a whole 3 months) rejected and abandoned me right before Halloween. I was even planning my first costume before that incident because I was excited to finally spend a holiday with another person. I was especially looking forward to my birthday and new years because I thought, for once, I wasn't going to be alone. So much for optimism.
I'm sorry my post has turned into a depressive rant, I just don't know how to lessen the pain of looking back at my life. I feel like I may as well be in my 70s-80s, regretting everything that's happened in my life. I know 30 isn't old, but I really feel like things are just going to get worse from here on out, with everyone around me getting married, having kids, having friends, celebrating holidays and enjoying life while I am wasting the rest of my life hiding in my room alone. Anyone have advice on how to cope with this thought?

What about your family and relatives? Do you live alone?

Hello. Well I have no advice, at least nothing I can say would be genuine because I'm pretty much as stuck as you are (ok, I'm a lot worse, just few years younger). But tell you what, you achieved some very nice things like going back to study and have a better life, your first boyfriend (I know he rejected you, sorry), and you are slowly getting out of the turtle. Your situation and mine are very similar so I don't know what else to tell you but good luck.

That's how I feel and I'm only 20. I spent my youth with little or no friends mostly locked away in my room. I hate watching movies and tv about people having their first relationship, or going to prom, or their high school graduation and being reminded I missed it all and I can never go back. I don't know if my life will turn out any better but nothing's indicated it will.

This might sound condescending and please don't read it that way, it is sincere.

You haven't wasted your life, it just hasn't started yet.
I don't think the biological age applies to Avies and at the moment your just passing time until something happens and you find your way to fully understanding Avoidance.

My experience has been I couldn't grow I remained the same and all that was happening around me was the years buzzing by as I watched on.
Until I had some success into who I am was when I started life but at my own pace.
I'm 3 Avie years.


Regards Dwight

oh my holidays were worse than 'nothing'

my mom beat me every holiday/birthday to teach me 'i shouldn't be happy at any occassion'

on my birthday she said 'your birthday is a cursed day, not a day to celebrate, therefore i'm gonna make you remember it through beating you'

and it's been that way always... even after i got away from her,
i've been alone.

i am not sure if why ppl kind of set it as a rule : 'be with other ppl on birthday/halloween' etc
so lonely ppl like us should feel bad

i wish if i were your old friend or something so i could make you feel nice by talking to you
but i am just one stranger online for you...
i am sorry...

your life is not wasted.
it wasn't exactly like 'normal' like that of 95% people in our society,
but just bc it didn't follow the typical form it doesn't mean it's wasted.
you know.. uh think about Hellen Keller or...

don't be tooo depressed honey!

yYyYy, I'm so sorry to hear your experiences, no-one should ever have to go through that.

I very much echo everyone else on here. I often feel I have wasted my life, and I look back and think I've locked myself away for so many years. I feel it's because I missed out many of the milestones that many others have (ie. having a emotionally intimate relationship with someone, going out and having fun with friends etc), and I also I've been so depressed for so long that I didn't celebrate certain milestones that other people did (ie. obviously birthdays, but also graduating, getting a job etc).

These things make me feel like my life is a never-ending tunnel of darkness with no light, one which although I put myself in, I just can't seem to escape. I just feel like I've been asleep while my life flashed before my eyes.

I can certainly relate to those feelings, it has just recently been hitting me like a brick. I am now 42, have only had one one real relationship since high school that only lasted 1 1/2 years, haven't had sex in over 12 years and have no prospects on the horizon. The only good thing is that I have recently started going back to church, and getting out and at least being around people has helped to get me over some recent depression.

-- Sun Jan 27, 2013 10:33 pm --

I can certainly relate to those feelings, it has just recently been hitting me like a brick. I am now 42, have only had one one real relationship since high school that only lasted 1 1/2 years, haven't had sex in over 12 years and have no prospects on the horizon. The only good thing is that I have recently started going back to church, and getting out and at least being around people has helped to get me over some recent depression.

I coped with it by drinking and listening to Pink Floyd's 'Time', alone. In other words: not well. One of the half-dozen times in this decade that I actually cried. I never thought about how things could have been different, though. I only wanted to understand why they never seemed to change. It wasn't for lack of trying. So basically I stopped trying... Not implying that it solved anything, though. It didn't.

anagram wrote:I coped with it by drinking and listening to Pink Floyd's 'Time', alone.

This very moment, I am coping by drinking and listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Beethoven's Last Night. Alone.

Some of the tracks can make cry every time.