My midlife crisis is occurring as I write this. I lost my job two years ago, have spent my life savings down to nearly nothing, and have wondered why I'm terrified of doing what everyone else says I can do. The mail goes ignored, my bills go unpaid, I'm living with my father at age 42, and yet I'm paralyzed by fear of attempting to do anything else. Even with the support and love of the people I hold closest to me who are certain I can achieve far more than I ever have, I feel inadequate for even a retail cashier job. I'm pretty close to rock bottom, wondering when the repo guys will come for my car. A friend even handed me an opportunity to make a LOT of money and yet I haven't done anything with it for fear that it won't work out.
My self-esteem has always sucked. No two ways about that. My father is abusive and largely a stranger to me, my mom is controlling and neurotic. I smoked pot through most of high school and college, flunking out of the latter so I don't have a college degree even now despite the fact I have a very high IQ. Compared to most college graduates I'm over-educated, most of it autodidactic.
I'm a man controlled by fear and the sense that whatever I do will result in failure. Despite that awareness, I can't seem to overcome it and the more I refuse my abilities, the safer I feel. It's so much easier to go just another day ignoring the increasing pile of things I need to address, and it's only because I don't want to be seen to fail at something yet again. Right now I have a handful of people who seem to be able to influence me. When my mom or my sister or nearly everyone tells me I can do something, I smile and nod and assume they're just saying what they are because they're obligated to. The two or three others who have no such familial obligation I do listen to and they make all the difference. They help me fight my extreme tendency to inertia and for that I'm thankful to the point of genuflection. No man deserves such friends as I have who have given of themselves so much for so little in return. One of those people wrote me recently saying he was concerned. I haven't had the heart to tell him the truth.
I'd like kids, I'd like to have love, I'd like a house, I'd like savings, I'd like to afford some nice things in life. Increasingly it appears I'll have none of those things, not because I'm incapable of them, but because I believe I'm incapable of them. My objective mind tells me there's nothing in the way yet the subjective mind has such degree of control that my attempts to break it have failed.
Yet I don't seem to mind hitting bottom all that much. It appears to be the only way to force myself to be the man everyone says I'm capable of being. Either I will succeed in this attempt or I will fail finally. I hope it will be the former.
You are a dear and kind man Davey. You've got Paul, a slice of paradise, and a burgeoning business. Please listen when I say that all that's worthwhile in the world is to have some security and some excellent friends who will stand witness to your worth in the world. It's really all it comes down to. I'm biased because I'm a pastoral person by nature. I went out to pee off the porch tonight and marveled at the delicate tracery of the trees against the sky, the sound of raindrops, the delightful scent of milkweed blossoms, and the spectacularly beautiful, exceptionally precious light of fireflies shining into the night. I had a friend from Idaho visit me two years ago and I took him down to the stream to show him the fireflies and he thanked me for it far beyond any other hospitality I showed him. Don't lose sight of the marvels of the world surrounding you. They are remarkably important.
There is nothing more important in this world than to love and be loved, Davey. There really isn't. It's all we can hope for and from all accounts of the final hours of those who have passed before us, is all that matters. It's an unremarkable realization, yet one that escapes so many people until the very end.
Be happy Davey, for you are loved.:smile:
I seem to have gotten a bit crazy recently and feel like I have a point to prove. "Like there's still loads of life left in the old dog yet". I've been questioning everything about my life and so far have come up with no answers or solutions. 
