Hey X,

I am in the same position, feeling like my chances at a real life are behind me and I'm not really living for anything. I can't do anything permanent to not have to feel these feelings, if you know what I mean. My spiritual beliefs are such that I am stuck with this life no matter how bad it gets. (you can read about them here, if you are interested.

This may sound way overdramatic, but sometimes I think that my life could only be worse if I was homeless, addicted to heroin, and prostituting myself for drug money. You can read the specifics of my life in this thread if you are interested, but the basics are that I am 35 years old and I live with my parents. This is pretty bad because my father is an alcoholic who still drinks and every time he drinks now my mom and I have to leave the hotel where we are living and I am put right back in that head space of the years between 6 and 18 when I was continually made to stay up all night to get screamed at and hit by my father.

If you counted all the time that I have actually been employed over the past 7 yrs since my diagnosis, it would add up to less than 1 year. I have been more or less supported by my parents ever since I lost my last long-term job 8 years ago.

I have been hospitalized for mania at least 9 times in the last seven years. During these years I have spent most of each of them either in a state of mania or depression. I've been "normal" only on average 4 months out of every year.

I have only ever had 1 long-term relationship, back during college, which lasted 3 and a half years. I was never in love with him and in fact have never been in love at all. I have only dated (and dated is too strong a word) about 4 men since 2004, and those were all very short-lived. I have since lost faith in my ability to even attract a man, since I used to be super fit and pretty but am now 50 lbs overweight and it just feels like I've lost my looks.

I've basically given up on the idea of falling in love at all. I feel like I'm right about at that age when the men my age start looking for girls in their 20s. Either that or they are bitter divorcees or worse - they have children. I can't be anybody's step mother. I've seen my sister's life destroyed by that.

I used to dream about travelling the world. Up to this point I have only been to a few U.S. cities and two other countries. I have never been to Europe, where I really used to dream of going. I have never had enough money to go on any kind of vacation. The last time I was on a plane was 5 years ago, to visit family. I have been wanted a dSLR camera for 6 years, because I always thought I would be good at photography. I haven't been able to come up with even $500 in all that time to buy one.

My career dreams are a whole other story, but let's just leave it at this: it's a million to one chance that it could ever happen.

So in essence, I feel the way you do. I have not "played the game" well for the last 10 years. I feel like I absolutely threw away the last ten years - probably what would have been my best years - being so emotionally unstable that I could not even form the basics of a real life.

Oh, and by the way, I have no friends. That's a whole other story as well. But on that note I will try to offer you an idea. If I manage to put together enough money to buy a car (which I haven't had in 3 yrs ) I will try to start making friends by using meetup.com. There is only one problem with that. When meetup first started it was good because most of the meetings were free. Now almost all of them cost around $20 or more. But, it's a place to start.

Also, there must be dating sites for people your age. Hopefully you are not the sort of man who is only attracted to much younger women. It might be the case that many of the people you meet will have had similar struggles or the same level of struggles as you, in which case they will be less likely to judge.