I am. That frickin’ clock keeps me awake nearly every night. Being alone just makes it louder.
If it’s worth anything, this comes from a formerly depressed, dysthymic, (and still) obsessive-compulsive, social phobic. So it may not be a representative sampling.
Stoid said:
I thought that was unique to me–I’ve always suspected that I’d drop dead upon becoming happy. Fortunately for me–or at least for my creditors, since my personal goal is to leave no assets whatsoever–this doesn’t seem likely.
The older I get the more I’ve considered death–I realized years ago that I wasn’t immortal; indeed, I expect to die pretty young. I don’t obsess about it, though–when it happens it happens, and I’m not going to worry about it. Then I’ll find out what if anything comes afterwards…and, if there issomething, whether it’s an improvement or not.
Well, since I’m turning 40 in 2 weeks (8/18), I’ve already been through the existential crisis of fretting about the loss of youth, the question of why didn’t I work harder and become more successful, the regrets over lost loves and missed opportunities.
My conclusion: it doesn’t matter. Yes, I’ll die. So will my cat, so will the baby next door, so will all the Dopers, and everyone now living will be dead in 150 years (accounting for advances in gerontology). So what? When nothing you do matters, all that matters is what you do. Live every day deliberately, don’t sleep through your life.
Yes, I could have entered the corporate world much earlier than I did, but I have had some great experiences.
I lived and worked at the bottom of the Grand Canyon for three years.
I have been to the Taj Mahal.
I have been to the Great Wall of China.
I have had wild sex in the back of a cab in Paris.
I have crapped myself half to death in Lhasa.
I dropped acid in Disneyland.
I met Vincent Price when he performed his Oscar Wilde show at my college (Hanover College in Indiana).
I roomed with Woody Harrellson in Crowe Hall junior year and got to give him shirtless back rubs. But he was straight and dating Mary McAfee at the time.(I swear I had no idea he’d ever be famous) Of course, there were hotter guys at school I had crushes on, but they aren’t well-known.
I’ve spent a night in a jail (Coconino county, AZ, lockup), a monastery (in Erlanger, KY), and a brothel (in Beatty, Nevada).
I’ve had beignets and coffee at Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans with a handsome man after a night of some of the most intense sex I’ve ever had.
I have seen a double rainbow after a blinding rainstorm on the Navajo rez, near Cameron, AZ, with the entire desert bathed in glowing, golden light. Amazing sight.
I have loved and been loved, and I’m in a good relationship right now, with a 22-year-old guy who thinks I’M the hot one.
I got cruised by a hot German guy in Yangshuo, China, and had great sex back in his hotel room.
I’ve read all of Proust’s A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu.
I’ve spent a contemplative afternoon staring at snow on rocks snowy at Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto.
To quote Thoreau:
[quote]
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front the essential questions of life, and not to discover when I came to die, that I had never really lived.
[quote]
goboy:
Well la-de-da! I got my picture taken with Elmo! Top that!
AAAAUUUGGGHHH! I’ve never met Elmo, my life has been wasted!
I sort of have the opposite problem. I have been suicidal off and on since the 5th grade. I honestly did not do well in high school, despite my intelligence, because I believed it was irrelevant, because I knew I was going to be dead at my own hands before I graduated. (I actually dropped out of school my senior year largely because of this ingrained belief - but I went back and finished the next year)
Now I’ve had LOTS of therapy, and reached a point where I was no longer regularly suicidal. I still had problems with depression, and suicidal thought will always be a norm for me- just achieving a state where I could dismiss the thoughts when they came - like an “on the wagon” alcoholic dismissing thought about drinking - I counted as a major success.
Then my sister became mentally ill. Hearing voices that were not there, arguing about things that happened years ago, and completely refusing any form of treatment. Despite my pleas to my parents to have her committed, my parents would not intervene. A little over a year ago she shot herself in the head.
Suddenly every coping skill I had learned went out the window. In the past year I have been in psychiatric institutions 4 times. 3 of these were following suicide attempts of my own. (Sorry for the hijack- I do have a point related to the subject at hand, I just felt the need for some background) I am finally starting to feel myself again, but, when I am feeling sorry for myself at least, I bemoan the fact that I really haven’t done much with my life. I am afraid that I will start wanting to really live and set lofty, worthwhile goals (goal setting is something I never really learned well- gee I wonder why?) and that then suddenly once I learn to love life something will happen and it will be over.
I’ve been pretty co-dependent and I’ve avoided setting goals for myself by having a really close circle of friends and just sort of done whatever it was they were doing. Living alone now for the first time, (since my roommates kicked me out after my second suicide attempt) I am trying to get to know myself allot better, but I really related to your op- if for very different reasons
(Sorry for the ramble)
you succeeded.
You see, I have NOT:
I lived and worked at the bottom of the Grand Canyon for three years.
I have been to the Taj Mahal.
I have been to the Great Wall of China.
I have had wild sex in the back of a cab in Paris.
I have crapped myself half to death in Lhasa.
I met Vincent Price when he performed his Oscar Wilde show at my college (Hanover College in Indiana).
I roomed with Woody Harrellson in Crowe Hall junior year and got to give him shirtless back rubs. But he was straight and dating Mary McAfee at the time.(I swear I had no idea he’d ever be famous) Of course, there were hotter guys at school I had crushes on, but they aren’t well-known.
I’ve spent a night in a jail (Coconino county, AZ, lockup), a monastery (in Erlanger, KY), and a brothel (in Beatty, Nevada).
I’ve had beignets and coffee at Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans with a handsome man after a night of some of the most intense sex I’ve ever had.
I have seen a double rainbow after a blinding rainstorm on the Navajo rez, near Cameron, AZ, with the entire desert bathed in glowing, golden light. Amazing sight.
I got cruised by a hot German guy in Yangshuo, China, and had great sex back in his hotel room.
I’ve read all of Proust’s A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu.
I’ve spent a contemplative afternoon staring at snow on rocks snowy at Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto.
Note that 6 and 12 are missing. I HAVE dropped acid in Disneyland, and I rejoice in the fact that my life is awash in love from all quarters and has been for a very long time.
But the rest…sigh. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 43 years and I’ve never even been to San Francisco!
I have a lot to do before I’m done…that is why time presses on me so…
stoid
PS: I’ve also had quite a bit of truly outstanding sex. I still have it regularly.
Stoid, the intent was not to make things worse, but to show you that life DOES have possibilities. There’s no reason for you not to achieve whatever you want to do or be.
You CAN transform your life and accomplish amazing things by exerting your will.
Ahhh, willpower…
“Let a man overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude is, in a sense, overcome.”
While I don’t necessarily agree that it’s quite this simple, if Santayana thought about the OP, doesn’t that make us all feel less alone?
I’m with you, except it’s my parents’ death that worries me. I’m even sorry I opened this thread because it’s making me think about it. I’m in a complete state of denial that my parents will ever die, and I just know when it happens I’m going to go completely off the rails.
Yeah, but life goes on even after that. My folks died relatively young, my mom when I was 33, dad when I was 38. Painful as all hell, but transformative. Many, many things are different after a parent dies, and not all of them are bad. I sure had to attain a new level of adult maturity and responsibility that I really didn’t even grasp existed, after their passing.
In the above paragraphs, you associated your fear of death with a fear of success. It reminds me of something…
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) gets discussed sometimes on the SDMB, and posters occasionally post their personality types (4-letter combinations like ENFP, ISTJ, ESTP, and so on for a total of 16 different personality types).
Four of these personality types fall under the general heading of the “NF” personality grouping, and NFs are known for being ruled by kind of a vague paranoia, especially when things go well for them. Here’s a quote from a book on the subject (from “Please Understand Me” by David Keirsey):
“…NFs, young or old, male or female, cannot shake off their intuitive understanding that existence is bittersweet, with defeat the other side of triumph–that, in the midst of happiness, sadness but awaits its turn…”
Of the four “NF” personality types, INFPs are especially known for this kind of vague paranoia. From the same book:
“…Even at the best of times, INFPs seem fearful of too much marital bliss, afraid that current happiness may have to be paid for with later sacrifices. The devil is sure to get his due if one experiences too freely of happiness, or, for that matter, of success, or beauty, or wealth, or knowledge…”
Now, based on the little I’ve read of your posts, I have no idea if whether or not you’re an “NF.” Personally, I don’t think you’re an INFP. However, this kind of profile reminds me of what you’ve described: A person with an otherwise happy, healthy outlook on life, but haunted by a vague paranoia that is especially attached to moments of achievement and happiness. So I’m posting this message as a possible lead for you to follow up. It may come to nothing–as others mentioned, this may just be some sort of garden-variety compulsive phobia or a bit of dysthymia. But who knows–if it turns out to be related to your personality type, the MBTI could give you some new avenues for addressing the problem aside from treatment with drugs or long-term therapy.
As for dealing with the problem from an MBTI-related direction, personality type theory posits that everyone falls under one of 16 personality types and that each personality type has certain characteristics (ways of looking at the world). There are positive and negative aspect to each personality type. If you are an extreme version of your personality type, then the negatives tend to outweigh the positives; if you are very extreme, you tip over into one of the personality disorders equated with your personality type.
Basically, balance is good and extreme indulgence of your personality type is bad. So, in the case of this vague paranoia that haunts NFs all their lives, you simply accept that it exists, but you don’t indulge it. When it hits, you treat it like unavoidable static on the radio or TV and work around it: You mentally tune it out and listen or see around it. For NFs, it’s not a sign of mental illness. It’s just one of the downsides of being an NF. It just goes with the territory. You just learn to soldier on and develop a thicker skin toward it. With time and practice, you hardly notice it after a while. It fades into the background.
If you’re curious to pursue this avenue, your therapist can probably administer the MBTI (a written test) or evaluate you personally. There are shortened versions of the MBTI on-line, but they aren’t very trustworthy. The full MBTI along with evaluation by a trained administrator is the best way to go. You can also go to the Psych/Self-Help section of your nearest bookstore and read up on the subject. The MBTI has been around since the 30s and is a trusted and scientifically proven bedrock of mainstream psychiatry, and there is quite a lot of literature available on the subject. Try Keirsey’s books or some of the books by Kroeger & Thuysen.
Again, I don’t know if any of this relates to your case. It’s just an avenue for further research. But I suspect that a certain number of people end up in treatment simply because they feel “different” and shouldn’t have this or that symptom. If they were to read up on personality type, they might find that a given symptom is simply part of the normal landscape of their personality type. And in learning this fact, they may realize that it’s okay to be a certain way, in which case they can often learn to work around the negative aspects of their personality type on their own.
Like I said, this is just a suggestion, not a diagnosis. Your fear could be explained a lot of different ways. But if you feel otherwise healthy and upbeat, the NF paranoia could be a possible explanation. That is, you could in fact be perfectly healthy, but you’re targeting and dwelling on one aspect of your personality type that other people don’t seem to have. By putting it in the larger perspective of your overall personality type, learning to see how it fits in with the rest of your outlook on life, and developing a little balance, you may be able to at least minimize its significance in your life and move on past it.
Miss 'em? Heck, I miss being able to remember 'em.
(But I still fly down ski slopes 
).
I lost my folks in my early and mid-30s. Bad side? Tremendous loneliness. Massive sense of loss. More tears than I ever dreamed that I had in me.
Good side? A better appreciation for who they were, and a correspondingly better apreciation of who I am and how I became who I am. Also more freedom and less responsibity.
Thoughts concrening my own mortality? When my parents were with me, I did not know what death is. Now that they are gone, I have a better idea of not only what death is, but also what life is. I appreciate my life all the more.
I finally came to realize that my parents would eventually die when I was 14 or 15. I had just gotten to English class and the thought hit me like a freight train. It was like, “Okay, someday you’re not going to have parents anymore.” I cried and had to leave class. I sat in the hallway for about 5 minutes before I decided to leave school for the day. Except I couldn’t go home because I was in foster care, which made the thought even harder to deal with.
My mom thinks I hate her. I think my dad hates me. I haven’t spoke to either of them in almost a week. It’s killing me.
I have always had a habit of what my Mom referred to as “borrowing trouble” — concerning myself over troubles that didn’t really exist yet. I remember when I ended up essentially losing the benefit of half of my weekend, because I found myself unable to appreciate Sundays because Sunday meant that I would have to return to the same old grind the next day.
Until I had children, I was never really concerned about death. I always hoped that when it came, that it would be quick and easy; I’ve seen too many loved ones live long, drawn out battles with cancer. I also hoped that it would come without me losing myself to Alzheimer’s first. I never was really too concerned about the fact of dying, however. I just pretty much accepted it as inevitable. As you hinted, it may just be that the rest of us are just much, much better at denial than you are. (When the teachers gave out the assignments for term papers at the beginning of the semester, I just glanced at the requirement, and didn’t give it too much thought until a week or so before it was due. Were you one of the ones who started fretting about it the day you got the syllabus?)
Now that I have two kids, though, I AM afraid of death. My Mom’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer came on the day my oldest son was born, and she died two weeks later of a pulmonary embolism. Even though I was grown and living in my own home and starting my own family then, her loss left such a gaping feeling of emptiness in me that I can’t bear the thought of doing the same to my boys. I know that it is inevitable that it will happen some day; I just pray that it will be after they are grown and out of our house and with families of their own. (The thought of the alternative, of losing one of them, is the only thought equally or more horrifying to me.) Though I know it would still be painful to them then, I know it would be something that they could handle, and I wouldn’t be left feeling that I still owed them something. Even though I realize I’m far for the perfect Mom, I just feel that it would be such a betrayal to them not to be there for all of their formative years.
So, basically, I just do what I can to make sure I’m there for at least the next 15-20 years. Since I’m 40 and basically pretty healthy, barring an unforseen event, I should be able to without much difficulty. And, since I live a fairly healthy lifestyle and don’t generally take unnecessary risks, I’m doing my part. It really doesn’t do me any good to worry about it on a regular basis, so I guess my mental housekeeping pretty much shoves the worry over into the “Not my department; This is someone else’s responsibility” area. So, except for those unguarded moments when morbid thoughts just want to insinuate themselves into my mind (particularly after I see or hear about a young mother with cancer, and immediately start identifying with her situation), I pretty much am able to distance myself from the emotion.
So, in essence, I guess I try to think of it like a workplace situation where something comes up and you know that it is beyond your ability to handle it. It’s not your responsibility, so you’re able to hand it upstairs and absolve yourself of any worry over it. If there’s nothing you can do about it anyway, there’s no point in wasting time and worrying yourself over it. (It just struck me that this sounds almost exactly like the “Give it up to God” line that fundamentalist Christians espouse. I am not really a religious person. You could think of “giving it up” to a higher power if you prefer; I simply think of it as moving it off my desk, or cooperating with the inevitable.) I really wish I could transfer this ability to you.
I know you read Heinlein. Go back and re-read “The Tale of the Adopted Daughter” in Time Enough for Love, and see how Lazarus Long explains to his wife Dora that we are all infinite, even though we may have different lifespans. (And no fair getting jealous of how his long life span gave him the ability to do all kinds of cool things and explore all kinds of differents arts and careers!)
Beltane:
Welcome to the SDMB. I am very sorry for the loss of your sister. I lost a cousin 6 years ago because he, too, heard voices inside his head. I hope you continue to seek help as needed. As you know firsthand, the loss of a loved one by suicide is absolutely devastating to those who love them; your loss would be keenly felt.
I hope that you get over this fear, and allow yourself to want to live. Life doesn’t have to be a John Irving novel, where every time something good in life happens, it has to be followed by a tragedy. Or, if you feel that it must, think of yourself as pre-disastered ----- you’ve already had your share of the bad times, so that it’s time for you to have your share of the good.