Figuring yourself out, hm? If the experience of this old bear is anything to go by, then that is something you will never stop doing. Because as we gain in experience and as the circumstances of our lives change, so do we ourselves. We evolve, we grow, and we adapt. The day we stop doing that is the day we perish - emotionally or even quite literally.

You say you feel naive - I suppose you mean that in the sense of lacking experience. The thing is, you do recognize this lack and its ramifications for yourself. As such you are conscious enough of your own shortcomings - which in my book is anything but naive. To know one's weaknesses is the first step in overcoming them.

As for feeling adrift, my advice would be to look to your friends - real friends I mean, not the "friends" so-called "social" media makes you believe you have by the dozen. Real friends can be your anchor so you can - in a metaphorical sense - plot your course to new experiences and adventures. No matter what you do, you are at the helm of your own life. Never forget that.

I've had things go wrong these past years. I say that as an easy way out of trying to explain. "Go wrong" can entail so much. I do know I've evolved and changed in life. I think for the better. Sometimes I wonder. I want to be a person worthy of love. Or worth of the one I love. I want to live up to the ideal they have. Or just be someone who will compliment them and make them happy. I think of this when you mention "evolving" as he and I have spoken about this before. He has a great perspective. The way he makes me feel about myself, it's not something I realized I needed, or wanted. Now, I love him for it. The thought is only tangentially related, I know. Things often circle back to love for me though.

I can't imagine not continuing to grow or trying to better myself. I want to be the best person I can be in this life. I know I don't always succeed, but it's an ongoing effort.

I recognize my lack of experience. It's just not something I can immediately change. Knowing things you feel lacking in but having little capacity to do much about them is stifling. Or demoralizing. Both?

I lost my job. I'm trying to find another. They keep putting out reports about the "great resignation" and how employees of my generation are purposely giving up their jobs and searching for happiness, trying to find careers or work that will bring fulfillment. I didn't choose to quit. I was laid off. Still, I'm trying to balance the search for work of any type I think I could do with the element of fulfillment. I haven't had a job where I felt fulfilled in quite some time. Perhaps ever. Yet I lack an education. This limits me. I keep trying. I've had interviews. Then I never hear back. It's crushing at times. I don't know what is wrong with me. Am I this unwanted? Do I have anything to offer in life?

I have a few true, close friends. I try to reach out to them. It's not easy. Sometimes they're amidst their own trials and tribulations. Or they can't understand me. Where I'm coming from. It's easier to generalize or simplify another's problems when you're on the outside looking in. Family is a mess. I can't lean on them. I am close to alone out here. Geographically and otherwise. I don't know if I could count five people I could truly rely on in tough circumstances. I'm trying to talk to those I can. To find some sort of stability, anchor as you put it. I need something. Most of all, I need love. That is the core of my life. What matters most. I care about everything else so little by comparison. No one understands me in this regard. "There's so much more to life," they tell me. What more to life is there than love? Career, hobbies, material things? Transient. When you die, will you be thinking about those things? When you are holding someone in the worst of times, will you want to hold a hobby, a possession instead?

Family for me is not what it is to many people. Sure, it means a lot. Beyond those other things. But mine is not ... what one would describe as normal. That's another story in of itself. I do my best to be there for them, to try to keep lines of communication open. I just don't have much in the way of support. Not the type one imagines from family. Not the ideal or the reality many have. Mine is fractured, maladjusted, messed up.

So it comes to love. Love is everything. I don't want to die without having felt that reality. The dream is to share life with someone for as long as I can. That's all I really want. I know that much at least. So I wait. Complex element, that. As we age, waiting becomes harder. You see mortality before you. Loss of loved ones reminds you how fragile life is. Unpredictable. I don't want to waste it. Yet I fear facing it. As it is. Alone. I hope waiting will be worthwhile. This person, they're the most beautiful person I've known. Or known like this. I think they've ruined me for anyone else. No one will ever be them. How can they want me? It baffles and intrigues. I'm speaking in circles, or riddles, or something. Waiting on another to catch up. To find their footing and join me in life. To accept the hug my soul offers theirs, wrapping around it like a snow leopard cuddling its mate, and never ask me to let go.

First of all I appreciate you giving me this glimpse into your mind. Thank you for that.
Let me go over what you said and offer my thoughts on it point by point.

First off, feeling demoralized by lack of experience. I concur that this realization is ..daunting, but being demoralized implies some sort of surrendering to the odds - which i strongly advise against. That way you lose your initiative and effectively get stuck - which in turn only breeds frustration about what might have been. Don't make that mistake. yes, keeping going in the face of adversity is hard. Very much so. But as they say, nothing worth striving for in life is ever easy (and admittedly I am sometimes struggling with following that advice myself).
This also applies to your job situation. If you don't find anything where you currently live, try looking abroad. And if your mate is willing to make that journey with you, then all the better. Not sure about your country, but over here in Europe where i live, there are also means for improving one's education as an adult - either full-time, or part-time while working a normal job on the side. Options exist. You just need to find them.

As for friends, it is not as important how many you have, but rather their quality - as in, how relieable they are. I for one only have 4 people i call friend without hesitation - three of which live in relative proximity, with the fourth living one country over.
as for family, let me quote one of my friends on that: "Relatives are not family by default. Your family you get to choose. Relatives you do not."
In a nutshell this means you need to choose who you want to regard as your family - your inner circle if you will.
I for one have many years ago severed most of my ties to any relatives I have - and I am not missing them either. This is because several of my relatives - my parents in particular - have caused me a great deal of mental harm. Therefore i see no reason to keep them in my life.
On love specifically I cannot comment because due to my mental trauma I have a very hard time identifying these more extreme feelings. Yes, i do have people who are very dear to me, but I couldn't tell you whether I love them in the way you describe, or not. All I can say is that I am feeling ...something.

I hadn't realized just how far down the rabbit hole I'd dived. I hope it wasn't saying too much. I don't usually share at this level, especially on here.

Daunting and disheartening. It tends to demoralize as you feel overwhelmed by what you lack. Uncertain of how to gain it. Being stuck, as I feel right now, adds to these feelings. I'm trying to press on, but things aren't improving. I think back on what might have been at other times, forks in the road in life. If only. But "if only" doesn't get you anywhere. You can only move forward from now. Keeping going. I don't feel like it. But standing still isn't good either. I do wonder what I am striving for.

I am trying not to leave my country, at this point anyway. I lack the higher-level skill set to facilitate moving overseas anyway. You have to have something to offer to get most nations to consider you for a visa for work. At least, that's how it works over here. Talking over things with my mate might help. I'm not sure what his thoughts are. Here you need to come up with funds for continuing education. Usually, you have to work full time and get loans to cover college, which aren't always interest free. The expense even for community college can be high when you consider you need to survive independently. If I lived with others, it would make a difference. Living on a single income is tough. Another issue is my exhausted state. I have anxiety and insomnia, which prevent consistent, restful sleep. While I was working, I'd often get 3-4 hours of sleep a night. That's hard on you. Trying to work full time while attending classes and sleeping so little might be more than I can shoulder. I know my limitations. I wish I had gotten to go to college when I was younger and less weighed down in life.

Quality is important. I have a few good ones like that. I don't always know about reliability. Some come in and out of being more present, supportive, and dependable. Then they slip away. Come and go. Ebb and flow. I don't pretend to understand it. I guess life's struggles get to them, too? Or something. Most of my friends don't live close by, which doesn't help. I've always wished for my family to be more like what you see in media. Just a basic support network that cares. I suppose we can choose them as we go through life. It's different. I wish I had what felt like family even in that context. Close friends, but not in proximity, and so often unable to do much other than offer kind words when I really need them. A few are more present, willing to step up. I should be glad for that. Appreciate them more.

You have that bad of a relationship with your family? I'm sorry to hear that. I'm always forgiving, trying to maintain connections, such that I will let things go that I perhaps should not. I don't want to hold grudges, no matter the wrongs committed against me. I just want family to work. I guess I never give up.

I won't ask just what your mental trauma is. It sounds quit horrible if it's had such an impact. I feel at extremes myself. This might be related to my own experience, traumas of life. I can't be sure. I know that I want love though. And my mate is my world. My life. I guess everything else is just the trappings of life. But the one you love is your companion, your core, that which you can build a foundation to stand in this world with. You stand together and strive side by side. All the other stuff is nice. It's just not what you need. Or what I need. I need the one I love. I find comfort and peace in them. Joy. Security. To have someone you can truly depend on and walk through life with means more than a job or money, location or home. Those things are unpredictable, ever changing, unstable no matter how much you might wish otherwise. But, you can endure anything as long as you have each other.

Let me put it this way.. when I was younger, i tended to be more forgiving. But that has only seen me abused even more. Hence my forgiveness has limits - and my parents easily surpassed those - even prior to adjusting them.

As for what I've been through, let me put it this way.. there are a little over twenty years of my life (including essentially all of my childhood and youth) which I would like to forget if only I could.

Forgiveness is good, but it needs to have strict limits, lest you only add to your own suffering by refusing to see an abusive situation for what it is.

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insult you if I did. I just meant that I'm probably more forgiving than I should be, to my own detriment. I don't like things to come unraveled, so I often put myself out there. I am currently the middle person in the chasm of my family. Fractured as it is. This group not speaking with that group or having a relationship with them. On the surface, they supposedly "made up," but no one communicates. I try to bridge the chasm, keep the peace, speak with everyone, find common ground, smooth things over, and make a family feel like a family. We want these things in life. I may be foolish.

I think if I were ever to write about my childhood and first decade of adulthood, it would be upsetting to realize what I've been through. I've tried. I think I made it to 2007. Perhaps someday I'll go back to it and try to continue, even continuing to the present. Life has been unusual. It's definitely not the dream we grow up believing in, or at least being told about as some possibility. Especially in America. The whole "American dream" encompassing education, job, success, family, etc. is all so much fantasy.

I don't need a lot. I just want a small cabin in the mountains with my mate. I don't even know if he wants the same. Or what will become of my dreams. These are small dreams. I hope we dream together. Maybe it'll be easier to attain together.

I'm sorry for what you've been through. At least you aim to move forward. I hope you're doing as well as possible. Don't mind me if I stumble over my words. I don't intend offense. I'll try to choose them more carefully from now on. I wonder how one knows what limits to set. I think I have them, but I always push past them, trying to make things work. Now, I think my parents are too old to really negatively impact me further, needing more moral support from me. I live far away, partially on purpose. But I feel guilty for not being there for them.

Rest assured, I am not offended. Getting me to where I would take offense would require a deliberate effort - unlike so many of the younger generations to whom mere disagreement often is already considered offensive.


As for bridging the chasm in your family, I do not presume to tell you what to do. Just let me say the following for you to consider:
Whichever factions your family has splintered into, it is not your job to fix that. I suppose the people we are talking about are all adults - therefore they should be familiar with the worde "consequence". They made their bed and now they should sleep in it. If they cannot reconcile on their own, then they deserve to live with the consequences. Expecting you to mediate - or even to "fix" things, is achiving precisely one thing: Draining you of precious time and energy which you could otherwise use to improve your own life.

I have had the same thing happen with my relatives - specifically my father and his parents. I fortunately noticed that drain early enough and one day stated that I am not a messenger and to leave me out of their drama. I have enough shit on my plate as is, thank you very much.
Blunt, certainly, but necessary. Because it served as a wakeup call for them: Either they got their shit together, or they don't. Their choice - and none of my business. It is not my job to keep the "family" in one piece when they made the decision to split it.

It's sometimes difficult to get meaning across online, with only text as a medium, and not unintentionally upset others. These things happen. So I wanted to make sure I hadn't said something that came across wrong.

I think the younger generation has grown up with the internet and different perceptions of social interaction, often with the heated and chaotic nature of social media. It's probably not the healthiest means of learning human behavior. I've met a lot of really good, even-minded, considerate younger people though. It's just that we're the middle generation now, caught between the elders and the youngsters. We get to complain about the youth. I don't think it's completely called for. It always happens where one generation sees the next as at fault in some way. Social media algorithms are specifically geared toward directing what is most irritating at us anyway, so we're bound to see the worst of this and think it is the rule. Perhaps I'm always trying to empathize and see both sides. Rambling, I digress.

They can lull you into a false sense of security. My mother is good at this. She's also aging, and in a bad situation in life. So less likely to cause damage to me or my life than in the past. I think she might be beyond that for the most part. Not by choice as much as circumstance. In the past, she might do harm even with well-meaning intentions. She's bad at life, I guess. I try not to hold onto the bad, moving forward, and while keeping on guard, also trying to forgive. It's complicated. Isn't it always? She's certainly had consequences for her actions. Her life in her later years is now quite unhappy. She's paying by some strange karma or just circumstance. Consequences have caught up with her. So I find no joy in it. I just try to be supportive from a distance, I live far away now.

My father also made many mistakes. They're divorced. He lives far away as well. His life choices have led to equally unhappy circumstances. I know it's not always the case, but both of them are paying in some strange way for what they've done. I offer support from afar and try not to reflect on the past with them. It can't be change. So long as they don't negatively impact me going forward, I can try to maintain peace.

The chasm is another thing. Between my younger sister and my mother along with her husband, our stepfather. A whole lot happened to drive a wedge between them, and my sister is less willing to truly forgive or try to build a bridge. I think our mother tries, but she's a broken person in a lot of ways. My sister chooses her "family" and has all but closed her biological relatives out. I never did anything to warrant this. I think distance just made it easier for her to focus and make people her priority. I'm not among her priorities. I've spent years always being the one to visit, send cards and gifts, try to communicate and keep in touch, all while knowing if I were to stop there's a good chance I'd hardly ever hear from her. If I would... She hasn't consciously tried to shut me out. It's just the way she is. Absorbed in her own life and circumstances and not conscious of how time passes. You never know how many chances you'll have to talk to with those you love. We lost our older sister unexpectedly in 2014. Life is fragile. It can end in a blink. So you have to appreciate it, and those in your life, while you can.

The drain of trying to keep in touch and find peace between everyone, hoping to smooth over ruffled feathers, or facilitate some sort of reconciliation, probably is more than I've realized over the years. I still don't understand how adults can behave so irrationally and hold grudges. Grow beyond such base impulses. Rise above them and be mature in how you interact with others, especially family.

I don't know that anything I could say or do would serve as a wakeup call. It's just as likely to stir the pot even more. I can keep trying to talk to my mother and my sister separately, and perhaps just let go of any real hope they'll reconcile. They both blame the other and are full of excuses. So who can tell where the truth lies? As Kosh said, "understanding is a three-edged sword. Your side, their side, and the truth."

even-minded considerete younger people? on "social" media? I am not denying their existence, but I for one haven't encountered any myself so far. Quite the contrary. I only encountered the loud obnoxious, and preachy types who wanted to bully me into falling in line with whatever their opinion was on any given day.

As for your parents, sure, karma is a thing, but it only rarely occurs to the right people quickly enough that they can learn from it.
That said, the mending of the "chasm" in your family is not on you. after all you have not torn it open. Heaping that demand upon you is as unreasonable as it is disgusting.

I can see why your sister effectively did walk away - because your happy family shattered into fragments log ago - and therefore can never be made whole again. Sure, you can put together the pieces, but the bond that once held them together is gone.
By holding onto the shards you only get one outcome: Pain. and lots of it.

as for the metaphor of a three-edged sword, as plausible as it may seem, I disagree. There are two sides, that much is accurate. But truth itself is not absolute. It depends on perspective (which is part of the conundrum society currently faces - where all too many factions claim to be the harbinger of absolute truth).

It could depend on how you approach them, or how wide the generational divide is. I've met some good people who are a quite a bit younger. There's a lot more social awareness and drive in youth these days. I think idealism can overcome good sense or manners at times. So that might be what you've come across. There are puritanical types who judge everyone by those standards, which doesn't help when it comes to the furry fandom. It's hardly a subculture that fits within a puritanical framework.

My parents are not having the best of outcomes in their later years. So I feel more sympathy, or at least, empathy for them. I remain guarded. I just can't separate myself completely. I haven't much in the way of family as it is.

I know the people we come to trust in life are "family," but somehow those have often faded as well. I can't seem to hold onto anyone. So I'm trying to grasp what I can.

My sister didn't have to walk away from me. Besides, much of the chasm is due to her as well. She chooses judgement, divisiveness, and self absorption. It isn't always that way. If you are in her presence, she'll show care and consideration. But from a distance, these days, I don't feel much that she cares.

Trying to hold together the shards is a good way to put it.

There is an objective truth. That's how science works. We as a species can agree upon these, based on observation and available evidence. So it is with family situations. An outside observer, without bias, could view the true circumstances. Either party will see things skewed. They both have elements of truth in how they perceive the past, but neither will be completely accurate. Thus the discrepancy and lack of resolution. People especially like to view their own actions as being less at fault.

To be fair, things are more our mother's fault in most cases. She's done a lot of wrong in her life. But my sister's behavior hasn't helped. I suppose growing up with a mother like ours, my sister took a path that is understandable. I can't completely understand it though. She thinks in a foreign way to me. I'm always left wondering.

Finding "the one" / "real love" seems to be even harder in this all connected world.
One should think its easy since anyone could talk or meet a person that fits him/her out here.. But the opposite is the truth.

The only thing for us to do is to be true to yourself and never give up hope or your dreams!
Just keep looking.. its what I do...
And maybe, if we are lucky, we'll be able to find what we are looking for in the end..

(if that makes any sense)