Practical Advice if you’ve lived a lie all your life, is it best to finish up that way?

[dandelions]

i will not get into specifics at the moment, but if one has lived a life of lies, not malicious to hurt or deceive people but to just be what you think you needed to be when you really had no idea, and i guess just to get by. and then did stuff like go to college and study something you claimed to “love” and then maybe get married with promises of always being the person you really are not, should you just go the full trip and die that way never knowing or being the real self? is the real self only what you happen to lie about? and what if this lie just leaves you sad, empty, unfulfilled, with images of what might have been? when you knew way back at the start, you were just trying to be a good and obedient servant and do what was expected of you? Answer this! i demand it! Please! i beg of you.

 

[WolfGoddess]

I answered it for me, I did not keep living a lie once i realized the truth. It was hard - really hard - but better.

 

[dandelions]

I answered it for me, I did not keep living a lie once i realized the truth. It was hard - really hard - but better.

Did it tear you up inside? Or am I unnecessarily catastrophizing? And did you know - have any idea - of what steps to take? My body hurts so much and I wonder if this is old age or the one part holding me back while the other part is trying to break loose.

 

[1964dodge]

as we start to age we do question ourself. should i have done this or that differently. and add in if someone was pushing you to fit into a mold to have a good life makes it worse. what you have to do is think of what you want in the future and gear yourself towards that. and if there are people involved and they may be affected by your choice use compassion when telling them. be careful trying to find the true you and be sure that's what you want. but it's better to live as yourself than what somebody wants you to do. remember don't regret your past it made you the person you are good and bad. mike

 

[dandelions]

if someone was pushing you to fit into a mold to have a good life makes it worse. what you have to do is think of what you want in the future and gear yourself towards that.

I don't think this is a starting to age thing. There was a bloody wake up call a few years back. It came to light that all my life I had been simply destroying myself as an act of obedience. I may have been pushed, but the "me" was obliterated in the process. I did not make choices back then that I regret now. I was left with no choice so I just said things that answered questions that I had no answers for. Not bad choices- lies! I do regret being who I am now. I missed the fun, mystery, challenge, happy and connecting part of life to satisfy the perverted parts of my growing up family. I hate that and wish I had some courage. I desperately want to be someone entirely different and real. Not a two dimensional obedient slave.

 

[1964dodge]

i understand extra . you can't change your past but you can change your future. figure out what you want then try to accomplish it. mike

 

[dandelions]

i understand extra . you can't change your past but you can change your future. figure out what you want then try to accomplish it. mike

But I guess I need to convey my feeling of incomplete self and multiple ways of being that never congealed into a full personality. I listen to your responses and I understand why you say what you say but I honestly feel that I have always been unable to take good advice and apply it to me because I don't know how. I've always attempted taking courses of action that to me had the feel of being correct, in line with being a societal creature but I am still always left with conveying what must be an illusion of being fairly ok and even successful where I still have no friends and cannot and never could rise in my field /career when I've known all along that I do have what it takes to be at the top of the profession. Instead I've always been a ho hum nearly nothing, frustrated that I did not rise to the top (or even middle). Even in junior high school, with violin, the day I joined the orchestra class, my teacher was amazed at my proficiency. I really was at the top of the class. By the end of junior high 3 years later, I was only Second Violin and the big disappointment. And if I was concerned about disappointing or not, I did always have what it takes to have lived up to everyone's expectations and didn't. My expectations? I never established what my loves were enough to make them a course of action so I had to lie to myself to go anywhere. Now I'm in the same situation. I don't know what steps to take and I cannot engage other people enough to get the feedback I need to discover if I am in fact being/behaving human.

 

[Singularity Platy]

But I guess I need to convey my feeling of incomplete self and multiple ways of being that never congealed into a full personality. I listen to your responses and I understand why you say what you say but I honestly feel that I have always been unable to take good advice and apply it to me because I don't know how. I've always attempted taking courses of action that to me had the feel of being correct, in line with being a societal creature but I am still always left with conveying what must be an illusion of being fairly ok and even successful where I still have no friends and cannot and never could rise in my field /career when I've known all along that I do have what it takes to be at the top of the profession. Instead I've always been a ho hum nearly nothing, frustrated that I did not rise to the top (or even middle). Even in junior high school, with violin, the day I joined the orchestra class, my teacher was amazed at my proficiency. I really was at the top of the class. By the end of junior high 3 years later, I was only Second Violin and the big disappointment. And if I was concerned about disappointing or not, I did always have what it takes to have lived up to everyone's expectations and didn't. My expectations? I never established what my loves were enough to make them a course of action so I had to lie to myself to go anywhere. Now I'm in the same situation. I don't know what steps to take and I cannot engage other people enough to get the feedback I need to discover if I am in fact being/behaving human.

Untangling a lifetime of expectation is not an easy task. Even now that I've promised myself to be true and tell (at least) myself the truth, I still sometimes later find out that it wasn't really the truth, but because I wanted it to be true so much I managed to convince myself it was true. Trying to behave human is also a necessary survival skill. I think it'd be cruel, and almost impossible, to demand yourself to be true all the times and not respond to people's expectations. I tell people half-truth all the times because I know that's how to connect and engage socially. But I also made a promise to myself to at least tell myself the truth and tell people who I love as much of the truth as possible.

Another thing about your violin class. My god, it reminds me of my primary school. I used to be very good at Maths and used to take one of those national competitions. And then something just changed and I was just not as good anymore. But that feeling of intense stress ( and at times excitement) still stays with me until today, even if I just play a stupid quiz. I'm actually honestly sorry that you had to go through that. When you do something just for other's expectation, sometimes it strips the joy completely out of the activities.

 

[dandelions]

because I know that's how to connect and engage socially.

this is such a problem for me. this is where i always fail. i do not do the connect and engage. that is, i must a little but i can’t seem to engage anyone to maintain a relationship on any level enough to last. my wife is an exception but that is because i took all of me and put it away into closets. and english is not her first language. i believe i was able to maintain a relationship simply because it was impossible to reveal me. we could not communicate. this was not actually something i wanted to do but i guess had to do because revealing truths too hard or more likely because i didn’t knwo what the truth was/is.

i am at a point now lately with many posts of screaming out for help and i guess no one or not many know how to provide help in the case of a person who does not have all the components of a personality.

my therapist points out that she considers me to have Aspergers and that is why i lack social skills. i would take it a step further, that i am missing components. i am a machine missing crucial parts. i don’t know if i was born without, or they were burned out in early childhood. i was “moody” and “difficult” and my father always said he had to handle me with kid gloves. problem is i have feelings. maybe i have heightened feelings as a way of compensating but i’m always crying for help and all my life everyone woudl say confidently, dan is doing ok. he knows what he wants. he’s independent. he’s tenacious . but this was not and is not because i’m ok. i always feel lonely and that i’m not human and that is why i can’t connect.

maybe nothing can be done now. i don’t knwo. i still lack the ability ot reach out and be successful in being touched back. people’s normal reaction to me is to be polite. and to not be condemning. but then they step back with avoidance. that hurts so much. just wish someone anyone would come play in my garden even if it seem there are no toys or games or anything of interest. even if its a completely useless place. i know its overly complex, complicated and complicating. i know i’m a puzzle with no solution. i just need some company. i mean no one any harm. i’m not actually bad. like i actually exist with good kind intent. but no one believes it. i don’t know how i got into this place. what i have is that loneliness is too much harm to me. don’t want that anymore. if i don’t do human things naturally, automatically, is it so bad to attempt them manually? i really do try. ok! this is how i feel all the time. this is my truth. this is why i came to this site. this is why i self harm. this is why i can’t give up trying. would be so cruel to take my own life. but i do need some rewards for my effort. never told so much truth.

 

[WolfGoddess]

Did it tear you up inside? Or am I unnecessarily catastrophizing? And did you know - have any idea - of what steps to take? My body hurts so much and I wonder if this is old age or the one part holding me back while the other part is trying to break loose.

I was already torn up, broken down. Realizing my truth and starting to live authentically has given me the best chance at survival.

 

[sinking_ship]

i am at a point now lately with many posts of screaming out for help and i guess no one or not many know how to provide help in the case of a person who does not have all the components of a personality.

People are trying to provide help best they can, as with anyone on here. You seem determined to see yourself as somehow different than everyone, more impossible or inscrutable. Someone offers an example of their own situation to empathize and your first instinct is to fight back, push it away, assume that it can't be valid or go deep enough to describe your own troubles because somehow you are, I dunno, different, or farther away, or something. You're just a person like the rest of us. People's experiences are unique but overlap. I think either because of your aspergers or just because you overthink things, you tend to assume there is some secret to 'being a person' that you have missed out on. It's not true. We all just stumble along. Some of us are more in our heads than others, and that gets us into trouble, but few people feel they've figured it all out.

With regard to your original question, I have also been struggling lately with trying to decide what I actually want, ME, versus what I have gone along with because of various expectations. I don't know how exactly to disentangle the two, because I think they must be necessarily entangled in some sense, because the me that follows expectations is still me. But if you do think you know an actual qualifiable YOU that you have been holding back, it does seem worthwhile to explore that, to see how you can be truer to that you.

 

[Lane]

i will not get into specifics at the moment, but if one has lived a life of lies, not malicious to hurt or deceive people but to just be what you think you needed to be when you really had no idea, and i guess just to get by. and then did stuff like go to college and study something you claimed to “love” and then maybe get married with promises of always being the person you really are not, should you just go the full trip and die that way never knowing or being the real self? is the real self only what you happen to lie about? and what if this lie just leaves you sad, empty, unfulfilled, with images of what might have been? when you knew way back at the start, you were just trying to be a good and obedient servant and do what was expected of you? Answer this! i demand it! Please! i beg of you.

My dear friend @extraterrestrialone, I believe that people live a lie much of their lives, in unhappy marriages, college degrees, etc. Maybe I'm not the best person to ask. Many of my peers seem to live successful lives since they have played by the rules that society has set up.

 

[1964dodge]

I think that we all live lies all the time, and some I think are good. we wear a mask to prevent people from seeing how much we suffer, we don't want to worry or hurt them. even the so called perfect person has something to hide, so yes we all live a life in a lie. mike