Hi Nelliefay,

Yes, I can and do relate. It is difficult to want something more and to be frustrated because your brain and/or body have been unwilling to cooperate. I used to be an office manager, as well as a writer. Now I do neither. I work part-time for a non-profit arts organization. I used to thrive an art... now I feel like it drains the soul out of me because the job I do is so limited. I don't write anymore or do any of the other things I used to find fulfilling. I feel like a schmuck next to my co-workers who live and breathe what they do.

But the difference between you and I is that you have the courage to try. Applying for the job you want, getting excited at the prospect of doing something new, that is fantastic. Very proud of you! Congratulations on putting yourself out there. That in itself is an accomplishment to be proud of!

HI raven, I'm sorry you are able to relate. And yet, I know I'm not the only one who has disabilities.

I can relate too, unfortunately. I fought my limitations for so long, not knowing I had PTSD and that huge chunks of me were cut off and dissociated. I'm proud that I got as far as I did despite all. But I thought I would keep going, and instead I crashed and burned. For the past fifteen years my health and energy just kept going down and down and down. I quit working after my second kid was born and never got back on my feet. I've been a lousy parent and feel like I am nothing but a parasite on my husband. I live in a town full of doctors and lawyers, artists and writers. I am ashamed when people ask me what I do.

While waiting and expecting my health to improve and my "mojo" to return I have somehow become 55 years old. *sigh* I don't rule out material achievement in my life but my circumstances have driven me to seek out spiritual meaning. I think it's possible and likely that I came into this world determined to learn certain lessons and to achieve a certain amount of spiritual evolution. Maybe the healing and self-development I am doing is exactly the work I'm supposed to be doing in this life.

The work we all are doing is nothing less than heroic. We all ought to honor and respect ourselves for it. But it's excruciating to live in a world where your accomplishments are invisible. It's so painful to know you have a V8 engine but an empty gas tank.

I've had glimpses of the prize at the end of the tunnel. I've had a couple of interludes in my life when my heart was open and fear was displaced by love. It felt great! Also, once after a very intense therapy session where I shared some deeply shameful secret stuff, I was driving home and had about 60 seconds of feeling a deep delight and satisfaction in myself, just for being who I am. I hope we all get to such a place in the course of our healing. Even better if we can go on to manifest our spiritual wealth in the world.

What do you think?

My dream was to be on broadway. No joke. I've got the pipes. Or had...

Anway, my controlling parents convinced me that teaching was the best way to go.

15 years into it and I'm burned out.

Many would see my life as successful. I see that I caved due to pressure.

I think that whole myth of living your dreams is just that... a myth.

You work to eat. Period. Anything that is somewhat related to satisfaction is just gravy.

"Can anyone relate to not being able to do what you wanted to do in life, and having to really compromise on your dreams? "

definitely can relate.
And there's the crap I get from other people, too, like: "you're too smart/talented/prettyetc. to be mentally sick- you must just be lazy." And the generic "You should be ______" .

A song from Quadrophenia "Helpless Dancer"
[Roger's theme]
When a man is running from his boss
Who holds a gun that fires "cost"
And people die from being cold
Or left alone because they're old
And bombs are dropped on fighting cats
And children's dreams are run with rats
If you complain you disappear
Just like the lesbians and queers
No one can love without the grace
Of some unseen and distant face
And you get beaten up by blacks
Who though they worked still got the sack
And when your soul tells you to hide
Your very right to die denied
And in the battle on the streets
You fight computers and receipts
And when a man is trying to change
But only causes further pain
You realize that all along
Something in us going wrong...

You stop dancing.
~~~~~~~~~~~

I stopped dancing to the music for a long time. Slowly I'm composing my own song.
I had to let go of other people's expectations of me as well as most of my own. I'm still working through it all.

Can I ever relate to this...I had a massive "psychotic break" in 1970. They're called that now, but they used to be called breakdowns...probably still are.

For a long time I totally lost my anchor to reality....didn't know if I was alive or dead. I kept trying to remember if I'd been in a car wreck or something. To this day I don't know if the things I experienced were some kind of spiritual ordeal or not. It took me a very long time to recover and become capable of any kind of function in society.

I had no help, no money. I wandered the streets, sold newspapers in the evening rush hour to people in cars at traffic lights, did warehouse work as a day laborer, dived in dumpsters for moldy bread. Yes, moldy bread is edible and generally not poisonous. Humans have eaten it for centuries.

Degrees did me no good, I had a master's in science and a promising career...lost all that. I tried to go back later, but it never worked for me. They thought I was on drugs because of what happened and because of the symptoms I was having like having my hair fall out. I wasn't even drinking coffee or tea, it wasn't drugs.

The truth is that I never really got over that. I recovered, but I never had much money after that, or respect...never used my degree.

And in retrospect, it was all related to the severe trauma of my childhood in a dysfunctional family and a troubled, abusive religious school Dad insisted I attend during childhood. I got beat up a lot...never got over that either, I guess.

Sometimes I'm very angry. I never did anything bad to anybody. Why does everyone else seem to get a free ride in life while I can't get on the bus at all? Life can be profoundly unfair.

thanks to everyone for your responses, lillypotter, donnawanda, deliannem thatwhich and richieD. I loved reading your replies, and I realised something in the process - there's a lot more to me than what I do for work! Like others said, I have learnt some amazing lessons, and developed spiritually. I have a good mind, and I am free to use it. I'm just sorry others have had to go through limitations too, because of illness.
Just remember, we are not alone.

Yes, I've felt this way many times. But what I discovered was that I typically did not get impatient or upset with my life, unless I was comparing it to other's lives. I think that is where the problem lies often.

If you read your first paragraph again, you'll see how far you've actually come! For now, you are doing what you can, and trying to improve your life for the future. Focus on that and NOT what your friends are doing! Some things just seem to happen easier for some people than others. I dont know why.

Give yourself a break. We are survivors of trauma, and the fact that we are still here, and behaving even halfway human, shows how strong we really are.

You're so right, Cindy. It depends on who I am comparing myself to. some are doing a lot better than me, and some are doing a lot worse. I need to focus on my own life, and how far I've come since I had my mental breakdown in '87. I'm proud of holding down a part time job that requires me to be honest and caring. it's a lot better than what I used to do for money!!

Yes, there are others of us here who have lived your story. I know I've lived a good part of it. If I compare myself to my classmates, it can make me bitter. The only way I can compare myself to anyone and come away feeling good at all is if I compare me in 2013 to, say, me in 2000, when I was in the hospital.

I've slowly gotten better over time. I work a much more lowly job now and I'm not a boss like my classmates are, but I do work and I feel useful and productive and I actually do get up in the morning and care about my job. There were times I couldn't work at all.

It's about me with me. It's inevitable that I'll see other lives around me and compare. Still. No other comparison really matters, and only I know what my life, small as it is, means.

I agree with these previous replies. We have to avoid comparing our lives with those of others who haven't had to deal with our troubles.

And there's dignity and honor in being a humble, hardworking person, often more than with those who have all the toys of modern life to while away the hours of their lives in trivial pursuits.

I'm not so sure that people of status and means are happier than the rest of us. In fact the opposite often seems to be true.

If I compare my situation in life to all of mankind, rather than those in my community...I'm not doing bad at all. Maybe all these TV commercials have taught us to want too many things we don't need.

It's funny isn't it, the saying of "you're not alone" and yet at the end of my working day when I come home to an empty shell and the phone doesn't ring or I dread Friday night because I know I won't speak a word to anyone until Monday...........I am alone........and yet I keep a smile on my face when I hear about what everyone else has done on their weekends................I'm lovely but suffer from PTS and it isolates me from the 'normal'..............