At some point, did something go wrong in your life?

[glowingfish]

 Well, that is an eye-catching title!

I was going to ask a more narrow question, but I thought about it more until I decided to phrase it this way.

Do you feel there was some axial period of your life, some juncture or turning point, where you were supposed to grow and mature, but you didn't? Some lost opportunity, either from external or internal factors, that didn't happen, and you are trying to reroute around it since?

I guess the reason I ask is that for me, it seems this is the case, and I kind of took it for granted that everyone would have a similar story. But maybe it doesn't come up for other people. 

(My original question was going to be specifically about adolescence, but maybe that wouldn't be the turning point for other people).

Comments

[beebalm]

Yeah, probably.

I feel like a lot of my late teens and twenties got consumed by illness and family responsibilities. Sometimes I meet people my age and realize they had a whole period of life dedicated to figuring themselves out while I was mostly focused on getting through the day and dealing with whatever crisis was happening at the time.

I don’t know that I feel “stuck” there, though. More like I took a different route and ended up learning some things early and some things late.

[glowingfish]

I in some ways had the opposite problem---maybe too few responsibilities in my 20s.

But also, I did have some in the background. My brother had a degenerative illness, and my father was his caretaker. My brother passed away in 2015, and my father passed away this year. So it was a factor in my 20s and 30s that I might have to be a caretaker. But this also wasn't a daily responsibility.

[beebalm]

I can see that. Even if it wasn’t a daily responsibility, having that possibility hanging in the background for years is its own weight to carry.

I’m sorry about your brother and your dad.