I don’t know where I’m going with this. I woke up at 02:40 this morning unable to sleep. On with the TV and there is some commercial for Save the Children or some such altruistic charity with some “B” list character actor and a sad faced, moppy haired little girl walking down the dirt street of her tin shacked village in her politically corrupt third world country. The American actor is bemoaning the fact that this moppet’s family is too poor to even afford her shoes. What da fuck were they thinking getting and/or letting the pregnancy go to term in the first place when you’re so poor you can’t afford shoes for your offspring. Chri-sakes; wear a rubber! Pull out! Put a fuckin cage around the bed! SOMETHING! Don’t squirt out yet another hopeless case for the predators as well as do-gooders to exploit.
  My family came from western European stock who immigrated several generations back. I was raised with WASP beliefs, morals and ethics. My father achieved a “professional’ status via night school/college with his post WWII VA benefits while his young pregnant wife tended their modest Long Island home and his 2 year old daughter. My nuclear family never wanted nor went hungry however my dad chose the path of quality time and attendance to the family over 16 hour days and blind allegiance to his career so although comfortable we did not have excess.
  My two older sisters IMO are good, decent, and ethical but prudish Pollyannas. Both enjoy long term marriages The oldest to a very decent man who came from “old” money and then adroitly lost most of it 20years into the marriage leaving my sister literally contemplating whether she could “drive a school bus” while perusing the want ads. My other sister married and toughed it out with her husband in Mexico City while he attended Medical School, then the internships back here in the U.S. She now lives a June Cleaver-esqe life in a modest middle class neighborhood in “Heartland” USA sending her two daughters to Parochial school (Dr. Hubby is Catholic). Although his private practice is a success and his student loans are long paid off their frugal minimalist mindset continues as Rush Limbough plays on their kitchen radio.
  My mom died in 01 leaving a husband of 53 years grieving so much as to visit her grave over a thousand times in one year’s passing. Slowly he found solace and companionship with a life long friend of my mom’s who had also recently lost her third husband.  With a new vigor my dad pursued life (much to my “Heartland” sister’s chagrin). Her indignation was unwarranted because a mild stroke recently has precluded my dad from his carefree junkets to Florida and his gal-pal. His beautiful ranch style home bucolically set behind a noted Eastern Long Island golf course has been sold due to it being more than he can keep up with and he learns now how to deal with “condo” life in a senior’s community.
  Where have I been during this brief family biography? I moved west shortly after high school to follow my passion for motor sports and a climate in which to enjoy them. I never went to college as my sisters did nor did I waste the time and money as they have by doing so and then not profitably applying their educations. A born iconoclast; the hobby proved a pragmatic alternative after the dissolving of two West Coast marriages along with the disillusionment I found with the common mercenary mindset of the civilian sisterhood. At present I’m under-employed and have chosen to maintain my mortgage payments thus effectively precluding health ins. (naturally my hobbying has been scaled waaaaaay back) My participation in my beloved motor sport is on hold and because of my less than mainstream social path my sisters hold a discernable level of contempt for me.(fuck em’!)
   I hope I haven’t bored you and don’t get me wrong; I’m not whining; musing is more accurate a word. My ATF (a dear friend) was recently laughing about a George Carlin routine where he professed about our “great and loving God that we pray to so that he doesn’t throw us in a lake of fire when we die”. It seems like the afterlife is as unpredictable and unfair as this one.  
 

what does the first paragraph of your post have to do with the balance of the saga?

Cynicalman,

It sounds like we're about the same age, and while our situations are somewhat different, the results are similar.  It also sounds like we both fell into the same hole after life didn't go the way it was supposed to.  I've wasted a lot of years trying to deal with all the adversity that hit me.  I realize some of us are just better than others at dealing with life when it starts raining turds.

I think middle-age is the most difficult time because it is when we must reconcile what has happened in our lives with what was supposed to happen.  And obviously, the larger this gap the more difficult the process.

We belong to the first generation that didn't assume life sucked.  Even though our parent's generation thrived in the post-war prosperity and economic expansion, their expectations were always far more modest than ours.  Going through a depression and a world war will do that to you.  In retrospect, they did us no favor by telling us all the polyanna stories about how we could do anything, be anything, and would do so much better than they did etc.  While some of that is true, it left some pretty big expectations in its wake- expectations that were bound to go unfullfilled by many of us.

I struggled with this even more than you have, perhaps, because I DID everything right and was very successful only to lose it all through a series of events beyond my control.  I reeled from this experience for so long that I wasted years in non-productive emotional paralysis- and I can't really say I've fully recovered even now.  The more unfair things seem the easier it is to get caught up feeling the way you (and I) feel.

While it may be a hackneyed cliche, the only thing in your control now is how to deal with all of this.  I too, have born-again Christians in my family that say I should turn it all over to God etc., and they're all praying their asses off for me.  I don't bother to tell them that I'm an aethiest, I just tell them I appreciate the love and concern their actions represent.

The point of all this is that life IS unfair.  Shit DOES happen and its the exception when it doesn't.  My life was perfect until I was in my mid-forties and then the bottom fell out.  If you haven't experienced this sort of trauma then you write stupid things like some of the other guys on this board undoubtedly will.  But I know what you're experiencing and all I can tell you is that you must find the inner strength to pick yourself up emotionally and move on with the next phase of your career and life- and that may or may not include motorsports or other things you thought it would.

I was a highly successful executive in the auto industry, then a series of things happened that left me financially devastated at an age in life when I should have been in my peak earning years.  Now the industry is contracting and I can't go back even if I wanted to- of course, I've tried, but once you're over 50 you're can't get hired no matter what.

I did a really bad job of processing all of these events, especially since I had always been the golden boy throughout my career.  But I'm now dealing with the reality of life, not the reality of my expectations.  I'm saying goodbye to the industry at which I excelled.  I'm looking at what options are available to me and trying to get control of my life and my future again while there are still some good years remaining.

You've got to do the same thing.  I know that nobody wallowing in self-pity wants to hear that they're wallowing in self-pity.  I sure didn't and got pissed off at my friends who were trying to help me.  But the fact is they were right and I was wrong.  They were right when they told me I needed to take actions like sell my dream house (I waited far too long due to emotional attachments and lost my ass).  They were right when they said I wasn't going to be able to get anything in my old industry and should move on.  And they were right when they told me I had to quit feeling sorry for myself, get a grip, quit mourning a past that was gone and take control of my future.

I'll give you the same advice as a well-intentioned stranger that my friends gave me.  I hope you can work through all these issues and not waste all the time I did.  Its natural to be angry, bitter, cynical and feel you're the victim.  All of those feelings may even be highly justified.  The only problem is they don't help anything and they just hold you down longer.  

I've learned all this the hard way and continue to struggle everyday with the new reality I now face- but its finally getting easier for me to do what I must do.  Now that I'm recovering and looking at myself and my actions of the past more objectively, I don't really like what I see.  I may have held it all together, but I did a piss-poor job of dusting myself off and moving on with my life.  Please don't go down that road any longer- its a dead end and life is too short to waste in such pursuits.  

-- Modified on 1/30/2006 2:25:18 PM

I would delete the first paragraph and consider why it is so cold hearted.

Hey, some of you are bastards. Wait til it's your turn. C-man, know that many of us have been thru the grinder. Many of us struggle w the same questions. Grieve, go thru it, face the pain, that's the only way out. And, as they said in Platoon, the world will tuen. Sure, you might lose some time, yeah. But enjoy yourself. Guilt is a waste of time. I don't know who created God, maybe the old man himself. But humans create their own guilt. It's a waste of time. Also, my shrink says that older people struggle most w regret. So, live fully. Chin up. Push thru. Breath. Know ur not alone. And you'd be surprised, brighter days probably await, even if you can't feel that at all now. d.e.s.

Your story sounds very similar to my father's, except he was in his late 50's when it happened, and he never recovered.  Instead of being happy with the things he had as he got older, he died bitter and lonely.  

I decided young that I will not regret the things I do in life, no matter what, and will never lose touch with the fact that we do not need to live the "American dream" to be able to be happy.

Many of us have been through the wringer too and understand C-man's pain.  Cogito wrote about having it all only to lose it.  Mr. Self Destruct wrote about his father.  I, like Cogito, am in my early 50s, made it to the top of my profession then lost it all due illness (I have bipolar disorder, hence my alias).

The issue isn't lack of compassion on our part for C-Man; his anger and bewilderment resonate all to well.  I for one wish him nothing but the best and think you and the others have given him great advice.

No, the issue for me and, I believe, for Xenopus is how someone who is hurting so badly can have so little room is his heart for the "little moppy haired girl walking down the dirt street of her tin shacked village".  

My reaction was quite different from his. The visual image C-man's words conjured left me feeling that despite all I've lost and the struggle that each day can be, "There but for the grace of God...."

No need to get in a tussle over my "poorly edited" Prose

   Fact is (if you re-read the last part) I'm not in a pit of remorse or self pity I just got to contemplating the plight of the little girl (and so many like her) and comparing tales I've read on these boards and my unexceptional existence and the factors shaping it.
BTW- C E DATY Your advice is not in vein for I have saved it to “files” because of the jewels it contained. Thank you.

  For those who think I’m insensitive to the little girls plight be assured I’m not THAT inhumanly cynical. It is contempt for her parents or anyone who brings a child into the world when they cannot even properly support themselves. The child(like so many) is an innocent victim of irresponsible vanity. I don’t care if you’re Pro-life, Roman Catholic, Orthodox Jew or Christian Scientist. You can live in any part of the world and be of any race; it doesn’t matter. If all you can afford is abject poverty then you shouldn’t procreate. This is an issue of ethics NOT human rights.

But what exactly was supposed to be so bad about being thrown down into a lake of fire?

 -- Deep 'feel'n the burn' Heat

...the odds are you will end up like her parents.  Not everyone can see the futile nature of their existence as you can...that takes time to sit on your sofa, write your heart out to the TER board and, oh yeah, not be on the edge of starvation.  That was the point.

makes me come to the realization that while I think I may have it bad, others share similar or identical paths.  To me, my dad is my hero and to that, I try to be the best dad that I can be.  I think I'm ok - even my ex who despises me on occasion will admit that I am a good example to our kids.  

In life, I have watched less gifted men succeed due to their willingness to be humble and subserviant.  I was in a major pharamceutical co... and observed a co-worker who was a drunk, and who contributed little to the company (no patents, no publications, no products!) get promoted and retained when much more gifted people were either demoted or fired.  - go figure.  I wound up in a small biotech company where I was placed in the difficult position of observing incompetence and questionable ethics "do the company in" (and to that end I thank god every night for the FDA and their ability and willingness to stop snake oil salesmen...!)  I through a series of maybe lucky breaks - or maybe bacause all of this left me stunned, have found some limited success late in life, see my kids as often as I like or can (due to job) and finally have come to some peace with life....  my regret - that my dad never met my kids - he would have loved them so - they are a reflection of him - and the opposite of me.

Recently I e-mailed one of the ladies on this board to see if we had met in a former part of our lives - turns out we did not - after my divorce - the first night I was away from our home - I had very vivid dreams of a lady that I had dated in school - not the person that I would have EVER thought I would think of, but I did.  I think I hurt her badly when I broke off with her - for someone who really did not even know I existed.  Maybe the bad karma that has followed me - was due to that, and finally the "spell" was borken -

upshot - I live with less now - but my kids love it and have taught me to think simple now... I enjoy my time with quality providers - knowing that it is what it is - a sample of perhaps what could have been - I don't regret my life - I just wish to keep going because I think I am actually finally "getting it" - and I don't quite know why it took so long -

and no, I don't believe in a fiery end when we die....  I just believe that god has an incredible sense of humor - look around - is it not a bizarre world....

recently, a MILF that I find highly attractive divorced her hubby - and went off with the "new boyfriend"- had a motorcycle accident and the boyfriend was killed - she - intensive care for 6 weeks or so....  sadly I look at these things and realize that I am lucky - biggest worry - traffic in the AM! lol and will the Ciaras ever come to philly! AND, is she, whose name we cannot utter, doing well and will she, who has no name, ever return?

good post.  it would be great if we could all express ourselves in presence to those closest to us.... rather than impersonal electrons on the web... but that too is what makes us what we all are - human.

-- Modified on 2/1/2006 6:45:44 PM