About to turn 32; Feel like the best of my life is over (anxiety, therapy)

[bawac34618]

I am about to turn 32 and I think this birthday is more difficult than my 30th was. At 30, I still basically felt like I was still in my twenties. Now, I am starting to show visible signs of aging and am inching ever closer to 40.

I feel that my life was the best it will ever be when I was in my mid twenties, specifically from age 23-26.
I have pretty much been miserable for the past 5 1/2 years. I have really tried focusing on the positive. My situation isn't bad right now when viewed from the outside and certainly could be much worse. I'm honestly not sure why I'm so unhappy. Right now, I can pin my anxiety on the following things.

1) I am gay and still in the closet. I had previously been out of the closet in my mid twenties but due to my fundamentalist family I went back in and did ex-gay conversion therapy in 2014. The birthdays keep coming around and I cannot get the guts to do what I need to do; cut my family off and come out of the closet. I am just so afraid to do it. I've come out to two friends and I am not sure I have the energy to tell somebody else. "I'm gay" are the two most difficult words to say. I cannot believe at one time I was actually openly gay.

2) I am living in the small, conservative Bible Belt city I swore I would never live in again when I left after college. It only took me four years to move back due to pressure from my parents as well as the recession. I tolerate it more now than I did in the beginning, but I still struggle with feelings of failure because I had to move back here.

3) I really don't have a lot to work with in terms of changing things due to having purchased a car I cannot afford in 2014. I purchased the car on impulse. I attempted to walk away from the deal multiple times but the salesman roped me into it. Since then, I've basically been working and living for this car that I didn't even want. I can't sell it because of negative equity. My ONLY options are to run out the clock on this car payment or allow it to be repossessed. It's a 7-year loan that ends in 2020. Right now I am on track to pay it off early (in 2019 hopefully) but that's still two years away.

4) Feeling consistent and overwhelming nostalgia for my mid twenties. My life between ages 23 and 26 is pretty much the standard I compare everything to and nothing comes close. I know this isn't healthy and I've watched/read material on overcoming nostalgia but I seem unable to really shake it.

I am certain there are lots of underlying psychological issues I am dealing with here. I know seeing a therapist would be ideal but I cannot afford it. I really wish there was a way for me to snap out of this. I've been in this rut for five years now. The years continue to go by and nothing changes. Either my circumstances need to change or my attitude does. Still, I should not be as unhappy as I am or have been for the past five years. I am very worried I will hit 40 and be half through life and have yet to actually live it (with the exception of those few golden years in my twenties). Can anybody relate?

[silibran]

You've posted along these lines many times.

Sell a possession or take a second job to afford therapy.

Find a financial advisor to help you figure out how to ditch your car.

Find the gay community in your city. You know there is one.

Over and over you have expressed such frustration. But you never take steps to do anything. Change has to come from you. You have to initiate it. You give reasons why you feel trapped, but you don't take steps to escape.

You have many, many good years ahead of you. But if you are not careful you will wake up at the age of 52, and be in the same position you are now. Your destiny is in your hands.

[Crashj007]

Originally Posted by bawac34618

I am about to turn 32 and I think this birthday is more difficult than my 30th was.<>

You're good at least thru 42 - best years ever. Physical and mental powers are at max, yet you have enough experience to avoid really stupid mistakes.
Go forth and enjoy.

[The Masterpiece]

First of all you are wayyyyyy to young for the best part to be over. You are aging because you are worried. I want to suggest living your truth no matter how anyone else feels and here's why... no matter what you do, some people are going to be happy with the decision and some people are not going to like it... you might as well do what makes you happy. Hope this helps!

[ClaraC]

Bawac, I would strongly encourage you to get the book "Tiny Beautiful Things, advice from Dear Sugar" by Cheryl Strayed. (She's the author of Wild, the blockbuster book and movie about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. FABULOUS woman).

Anyway, in the past her job was to write an advice column, and this book is some of the best advice on everything in life. It will make you laugh, and make you cry.

It's done in a question and answer advice column format.

Chapter 3, That Ecstatic Parade, is a question written by a man in exactly your situation. Honestly, you could have written it. Her advice goes on for pages, and is helpful, but basically, "You mustn't live with people who wish to annihilate you. Even if you love them. Even if you're your mom and dad. . . It's miserable that your parents are such ill-informed bigots. I'm sorry they made you suffer so, sweet pea."

Get the book. Really. And read the whole thing. It's very readable, and will give you the strength and courage to live authentically.

All the best. We all only get one life, this is yours, live it fiercely.

[Sonic_Spork]

I have lived in many places, and finding community and a sense of home and belonging makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD to your happiness. I don't know what your field of work is, but I strongly suggest that you start scoping for opportunities in a new location, networking with other people and making helpful supportive connections there, and scheming a move.

I know people who have moved here and only had the ability to start out renting a room or staying with a friend, someone they maybe don't even know well or know from online or something...getting started in a job, and stepping off from there. This city (Colorado Springs) has wonderful LGBTQ+, poly, kink, and alt communities. We have a conservative reputation, but it's just a fringe group of loud idiots. The rest of us ignore them pretty easily.

The point I wish to make here is not an attempt to persuade you to come HERE specifically, it is to say that not everywhere is like where you are, and you should relocate because it sounds necessary to be genuine and happy. If your family is narrow minded and cruel, choose new family.

Best wishes.

[Parnassia]

TBH OP I think chronological age has little to do with how you feel. Its a number, a tally mark, a calendar entry. There is a lot going on in your mind that I can't appreciate not being in your shoes. I do know that focusing on all the bad stuff and the "shoulda woulda couldas" simply takes more time away from life that has yet to be experienced. I have dealt with depression for most of my life so I know how hard it is to get out of an emotional spiral, believe me.

Age 32 is still only one third of a decent lifespan. You have 2/3 of your potential life ahead, not behind. One line spoken by Glen Close in the movie The Natural sticks in my mind quite often. Something like "I believe we have two lives....the one we are born with and the one we learn to live with after that".

Every time you make that car payment you are CLOSER to freedom from that debt, not FARTHER. Its a little thing, but sometimes a little thing gives you power.

I am not gay so cannot realistically give you advice. All I can offer is a reminder that many people would never hold that against you. There are all sorts of platitudes people may say about it but the fact remains it is something you have like your skin. Put your energy into something else that you have more control over.

Nostalgia has its good and bad. Maybe reminding yourself of the things you could NOT do at a younger age instead of the things that are somehow gone? Age brings good things too such as self awareness, tolerance, kindness, the ability to advise younger people who are facing things you have ALREADY faced. Because you have struggled you have experience younger people don't, and that's a quality you can use.

I really believe that turning your energy toward causes larger than yourself or to others besides yourself can help dig you out of the hole. It can be such a mental relief to think about something other than your present miseries. I am not saying you have to dump all your worries immediately or all at once. No one can do that. What I am suggesting is trying some small things. Every little bit of satisfaction or accomplishment will give you power to overcome all the negative voices saying you are worthless, useless, or doomed.

When I was recovering from cancer chemotherapy I worked with a graduate student who was studying anxiety triggered by drugs that could pass the brain barrier and mess up your head (neurotransmitter regulation and such). She was experimenting with techniques to break the cycles of panic and non-specific anxiety that would wash over people multiple times every day.

Once every hour I was to stop whatever I was doing, sit down with a watch, and worry about everything I could possibly imagine for as hard as I could for 10 minutes. Think about nothing other than my worries, even write them down if that helped. At the end of the 10 minutes I could go back to work or whatever. I had to "save" any worries that cropped up in my mind over the next 50 minutes until the next hour's window. Oh wow, I thought, how can I limit all this to a mere 10 minutes? Well, after a couple of days of this I found I couldn't fill that 10 minutes no matter how hard I tried. What had consumed my mind before was now relegated to a mere 1/6 of a single hour. I could not come up with enough worry fodder to fill the time.

The point was to gain control of worry. To give it a specified window of time when it was permitted, not more. Control is power. The worry wasn't descending on my head, I was allowing it. Bam....amazing realization. Maybe some exploration of techniques like this might help you gain some leverage over the negativity?

[NickofDiamonds]

Only you have the key to your cell which will release you from hell.
There is no easy way out. You have to muster up the courage and intellect to come up with a plan and a backup plan in case the first doesn't pan out.
Figure out what big city where you can evolve to what you want to be and work like your life depends on it to get there because basically it does.
Until you have the money to buy your freedom and go to pursue your dreams, you will be constantly be locked in a nightmare and doing a coulda, woulda, shoulda on yourself when you reach an advanced age and realize that it only was fear that held that kept you in bondage because you didn't want something bad enough.
No one said life was easy or fair but one thing for sure is that it's short.

[jaminhealth]

Oh good grief, OP, aches and pains comes along with the package of Life. Wait till you are pushing 79. Take good supplements and work on prevention. And consume good foods. Keep moving, but not overboard on the crazy addicting exercise wheel.

Work on moving to a more ACCEPTING community. Or like one poster said find friends who are accepting and open.

[hotzcatz]

If it were me, I'd look around for living opportunities away from the bible belt and disapproving family members. Maybe take a vacation you never return from? Just leave and not tell them where you went for six months? Move to another country? Get a 'great job' someplace far away in a community you want to live in and move there and then tell your family that the job didn't work out?

Since you're with folks who don't want you to be who you want to be, you're gonna have to go someplace else to be who you want to be. Easier to re-invent yourself if it's further away than closer.