If there are two roads to take, you got a 50/50 chance, but what if there are a million or infinite number of roads, and (divorce, points)

[desperoto]

you don't know where to start?

I once heard a quote, I think from alice and wonderland, something like

"which road should I take"
"where do you want to go"

"I don't know"
"then it doesn't matter"


So, I guess it doesn't matter which decisions I make now, since I literally am lost. Lost mentally, lost spiritually, lost physically, lost geographically, lost workability, lost livability, etc.

I use to believe in stuff, then it all turned out to be a lie or just a bunch of lies all to manipulate me to act a certain way, to never voice my opinions, or to do what i wanted, or even learn new things.

My parents like seriously never taught me anything useful ever. I use to wipe my hair after a shower the wrong way, i brushed my teeth incorrectly, i ate unhealthy, I became anxious all the time, I was fearful almost all day long, I sometimes thought I was crazy b.c I didn't understand why they were always calling my a dumb ass or a bad kid, or a trouble maker, when I didn't really ever do anything bad like other kids were doing. I was hardly ever fed healthy meals, I had to beg if I wanted my mom to make a meal for me, I had to beg for money to buy necessary school supplies, I had to beg to get a ride to a friends house.

So yea, I use to be a christian, until I realized how my parents are anything but, and just used it to control me.

I was suppose to tell them everything about me and what happened at school, or who i liked, but i could never ask them anything. They would just say its for parents to know and you not to know, or some crap.

I would see my parent's driving around in new cars every few years, but they almost never bought me what i wanted, they would mostly buy stuff i didn't even ask for , and would make me say thank you and tell them that i have the best parents in the world, aha.

Yeah, they probably have mental issues but were always to ignorant to seek help, and they'll probably end up homeless or something, God knows what, before they are 65.

But am I going to take care of them, when they didn't take care of me. When I was down, all they did was criticize me and humiliate me, and make me want to kill myself.

So here I am, moments away from complete homelessness, and am lost. I hate that I almost always feel like crap, that i have health issues, that I am fearful of people especially women. I hate of even thinking about working a meaningless job that stresses me out and wears me down even more just to afford a crap apartment.

But most of all, I probably hate how jaded and my inability to ever find meaning in this life again. Sure some people might go to parties or do fun things, but my anxiety keeps me from even doing that. I can't help but think I will look back 20 years from now, if I'm still alive, and being even more depressed than I already am. For all the chances I didn't take, for all the people I didn't meet, for all the relationships I never could start.

I've tried almost everything, I'm on the correct meds, but my family not accepting me even after I tried to explain everything and just kicking me some more, I just think I lost my heart. I don't know what can bring me back to a normalcy. Maybe meeting a cool girl? Probably not, but maybe it can give me hope again that some person could actually like me. But what girl would date a homeless guy? LOL.

[elyn02]

Desperoto, I was raised in a similar environment so I do feel for you. It has been a LONG road to recovery. The title to your thread has a similar theme to a question I had once. Somebody recommended a book and after that, there was no turning back.

I truly wish you health, love and happiness.

[mordant]

Originally Posted by desperoto

you don't know where to start?

I once heard a quote, I think from alice and wonderland, something like

"which road should I take"
"where do you want to go"

"I don't know"
"then it doesn't matter"

So, I guess it doesn't matter which decisions I make now, since I literally am lost.

Basically, no, it doesn't matter in the situation you describe. The important thing is to KEEP MOVING. Do SOMETHING. Observe the results. Steer from there.

Life isn't as complicated as all that if you work to keep it simple. Most courses of action are far more reversible or at least abandonable than you'd think. You can even stick to low-consequence courses of action to limit any harm from potential mistakes -- until you have enough confidence in yourself and your understanding of life to take more risks.

You have also correctly diagnosed that a lot of what people put on you is just BS to control you. And assuming you are conveying things accurately, yes, your parents are posterior bodily orifices. In fact you sound much like my current wife -- both of you effectively grew up feral, figuring it out for yourselves. It gives new meaning to the adjective "self-made". It is possible to become a very effective and impressive human being anyway. In some ways, BECAUSE of it.

Your biggest enemy will be anxiety. You have a very soft marshmallowy center that isn't sure of itself and is terrified of making mistakes or having misunderstandings. You will have to figure out how to think and act your way out of that. By "act" I mean both pretend you know what you are doing and take action. Run to the roar.

Your second biggest enemy will be a tendency, consciously and unconsciously, to keep trying to figure out ways to finally get your parents to notice, to care, and to approve. They are NEVER going to see the light. Let go of that fantasy RIGHT NOW. They are just not good parents, and likely are actively toxic in multiple ways for you. This is no meaningful reflection on you, it's just horrible luck.

It took my wife's brother about 40 years to figure out that their father was a [Scatalogical Noun That Must Not Be Mentioned Here]. My wife thought he was being simplistic and uncharitable. It took her another 10 years or so but now she has seen the light and agrees with her brother. Don't take the next two decades to sort that out. Get it straight in your head now. Your parents aren't worth it. If you're wrong about that, then at some point they will approach YOU with genuine caring and interest and desire for healthy reconciliation and dialogue. Don't believe it until you see it. Don't fantasize about it. Let. It. Go.

I am actually quite impressed with most of what you wrote, it seems to me like you are on the right track here if you will just have the temerity to believe in yourself. See yourself 20 years from now triumphant over your fears and anxieties and insecurities rather than destroyed by them. Work hard on yourself. You'll make it.

[ukrkoz]

Not a bad postulate actually.
Was done before though:
Buridan's ass is an illustration of a paradox in philosophy in the conception of free will.
It refers to a hypothetical situation wherein an ass that is equally hungry and thirsty is placed precisely midway between a stack of hay and a pail of water. Since the paradox assumes the ass will always go to whichever is closer, it will die of both hunger and thirst since it cannot make any rational decision to choose one over the other.[1] The paradox is named after the 14th century French philosopher Jean Buridan, whose philosophy of moral determinism it satirizes. A common variant of the paradox substitutes two identical piles of hay for the hay and water; the ass, unable to choose between the two, dies of hunger.


Also, it sort of reminds me of Achilles and toroise argument:
Zeno's paradoxes are a set of philosophical problems generally thought to have been devised by Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (ca. 490–430 BC) to support Parmenides's doctrine that contrary to the evidence of one's senses, the belief in plurality and change is mistaken, and in particular that motion is nothing but an illusion. It is usually assumed, based on Plato's Parmenides (128a-d), that Zeno took on the project of creating these paradoxes because other philosophers had created paradoxes against Parmenides's view. Thus Plato has Zeno say the purpose of the paradoxes "is to show that their hypothesis that existences are many, if properly followed up, leads to still more absurd results than the hypothesis that they are one." (Parmenides 128d). Plato has Socrates claim that Zeno and Parmenides were essentially arguing exactly the same point (Parmenides 128a-b).



Some of Zeno's nine surviving paradoxes (preserved in Aristotle's Physics[1] and Simplicius's commentary thereon) are essentially equivalent to one another. Aristotle offered a refutation of some of them.[1] Three of the strongest and most famous—that of Achilles and the tortoise, the Dichotomy argument, and that of an arrow in flight—are presented in detail below.
Zeno's arguments are perhaps the first examples of a method of proof called reductio ad absurdum also known as proof by contradiction.

In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead. – as recounted by Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b15

In the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 metres, for example. If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 metres, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, say, 10 metres. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, he can never overtake the tortoise

That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.– as recounted by Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b10

Suppose Homer wants to catch a stationary bus. Before he can get there, he must get halfway there. Before he can get halfway there, he must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a quarter, he must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on.


This description requires one to complete an infinite number of tasks, which Zeno maintains is an impossibility.
This sequence also presents a second problem in that it contains no first distance to run, for any possible (finite) first distance could be divided in half, and hence would not be first after all. Hence, the trip cannot even begin. The paradoxical conclusion then would be that travel over any finite distance can neither be completed nor begun, and so all motion must be an illusion.

If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.[11] – as recounted by Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b5

In the arrow paradox (also known as the fletcher's paradox), Zeno states that for motion to occur, an object must change the position which it occupies. He gives an example of an arrow in flight. He states that in any one (durationless) instant of time, the arrow is neither moving to where it is, nor to where it is not.[12] It cannot move to where it is not, because no time elapses for it to move there; it cannot move to where it is, because it is already there. In other words, at every instant of time there is no motion occurring. If everything is motionless at every instant, and time is entirely composed of instants, then motion is impossible.
Whereas the first two paradoxes divide space, this paradox starts by dividing time—and not into segments, but into points.

[jtur88]

It brings to mind the famous quote from Goethe:
"Once you've missed the first buttonhole, you'll never manage to button up."

Once you've gone down the wrong road, there are no more right choices. You have to find a way to restart, with new objectives and new courses, reinvent your life.

[elyn02]

Originally Posted by jtur88

It brings to mind the famous quote from Goethe:
"Once you've missed the first buttonhole, you'll never manage to button up."

Once you've gone down the wrong road, there are no more right choices. You have to find a way to restart, with new objectives and new courses, reinvent your life.

This has been very true in my own experience.

[mordant]

Originally Posted by jtur88

It brings to mind the famous quote from Goethe:
"Once you've missed the first buttonhole, you'll never manage to button up."

Once you've gone down the wrong road, there are no more right choices. You have to find a way to restart, with new objectives and new courses, reinvent your life.

This is true in a sense. But the key is acceptance.

One of my big goals as a youngster was to be a one woman man. I wanted to fall in love, be happy with someone my whole life, and grow old together.

Nothing wrong with that, but for it to work, and not be some kind of sick parody of itself, you have to choose well and have a certain amount of good luck. I failed on both counts. Once I'd done that, there was inherently no way to go back and "reboot" once I was a middle aged divorcee and single parent.

In that instance I had to accept a "new normal" and work within it. Although my original dream was both noble and admirable, it wasn't going to be and I had the stark choice to either mourn that the rest of my life or find a way to flex with life-as-it-was. I had to not be attached to my own hopes, dreams and aspirations, no matter how (ig)noble they might have been. I have since come to realize that being only very loosely attached to your fondest wishes is the only way to go. I've been through three major reboots now and old age is forcing a fourth on me at some point, doubtless. So it goes. Don't insist that your life follow some script, however well written it may be.

[iNviNciBL3]

There is one road and that road is a one way street. You're fine.

[thriftylefty]

One of the eastern philosophers said that when you come to the fork in the road you are on the wrong road. When you are moving in the right direction you will not perceive the proverbial fork as giving you a choice. You will automatically know the path you are taking and disregard the other path.

[Miss Hepburn]

I hate your parents.

A therapist once said to me...Relax, breathe 10 xs, close your eyes...now picture
whomever you want.. parents?..Standing in front of you and say, scream anything you want to
them.
Well, in one second I'm yelling at them, Why did you ever have children and on and on....finally
I think I got an automatic weapon and shot them to a million pieces.

I re wrote history in my brain..Told them off and made them blow up into nothing.
There...that cured a lot of my problems instead of being their victim.
Ahhh....you've got to get their programming out of you.
They were wrong, wrong, wrong.
Get the truth in you that you are loved and adorable and you know
all the fancy therapy words...."I'm good enuff, and darn it, people like me.."