LesserFollies on 10/6/2018 at 04:19

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Gray, that's so sad. You are really such a nice man and you've had such a hard time. There is very little justice in this world. Please hang in there.

Gray on 10/6/2018 at 22:05

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Thanks for your concern. Reading back my post now, it seems a bit whiny, which is not what I intended. Meeting my wife was a great moment. Those of you who remember me will know I generally don't like people, or being around them, or interacting with them, or them just being alive and roughly in my vicinity. She was different. She'd make me happy just by being in the same room, we didn't even need to speak, she already knew what I was thinking. She was the one person who totally understood me. I'd never known this insane level of happiness before. She made me happier than I ever thought possible, and no, that is not a sex joke, that is how awesome her personality was. I never quite understood though why she'd settle for someone as dull as me, but apparently I made her quite happy as well.

Yes, I'm a bit lost right now, but looking back, I've had the luxury of complete and total happiness. I've had perfection. Not a lot of people get that. I feel very fortunate. I just have to figure out where my life is going from this point on. Maybe I'll stay in Scotland. It's quite nice when it's not raining sideways.

Harvester on 25/6/2018 at 15:07

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20 years ago I was 18 years old. I graduated from (Dutch) high school at the age of 17, which is considered young to go to a college or university. There's this unofficial college which still exists (unofficial as in legal, but gets no funding from the government), founded on Christian principles, where you're guided in matters of faith and are prepared for college/university life, where Christians are a minority. I don't know how it is now, but back then they taught Creationism and everything. I enrolled there because a friend of mine was also going and because my parents advised me to do so, they considered me a bit immature for the college life and they were absolutely right. In the summer vacation before that school year started I had my first real girlfriend, which was fun but didn't last past the holidays.

While nowadays I don't agree with some of the things they taught at that college, I had a blast of a year. I really came to get to know myself better, there were few unpleasant people who harassed me (an improvement from high school), and I made some friends I still have to this day. As I said I was immature so I didn't really spend a lot of time on school work, preferring to hang out at friends' homes or at a favorite bar in the city. It was a great year for socializing and learning how to talk to girls. I also worked evenings at a call center, which helped my communication skills. My interests at the time were video games (Unreal was the highlight of that year for me, followed by Starcraft), dance music and the demo scene. I even went to a huge demo scene party that year. The next year I went to study Informatics at a college in the city where I still live. I didn't finish that education, because I got depressed, got diagnosed with autism etc. A story for another time perhaps.

***

Now 20 years later, it's also been one year after the passing of my wife. I think I'm doing pretty well trying to move on, all things considering. I have a new job as a software developer. I work on a business-to-business webstore that was designed from scratch using PHP/Symfony. From scratch meaning that we don't use a webstore platform like Magento, because the client wants far too much custom functionality that can never be stuffed into a mold like Magento. That job caused me a lot of stress at first, because I was insecure, I've never programmed for a commercial business before, and I was anxious of getting new co-workers. But now it's going better - they're satisfied with my performance, the co-workers are nice people, and the insecurity has lessened because I'm finding out I can fix pretty nearly all of the problems they throw at me. Soon I'll be put to work on expansions (larger new sections of the site) rather than just hotfixes (fixing bugs and making small additions to the site), which I've been doing until now. This new job also came with an increase in income, so I live reasonably comfortably now.

I'm trying not to become lonely, so I meet up with friends and family members and spend some time on Facebook. In my alone time it's a mix of reading the paper, reading books, watching movies, some gaming and watching Star Trek episodes. I try to keep the evenings after workdays free, I kind of need time alone to unwind.

So far so good, you could say I'm doing alright. But I'm still struggling to find new meaning to my life and I miss my wife every day. It's nice that I'm finally working as a programmer, but I'd have preferred to share that accomplishment with my wife. I can enjoy the things I do with friends and by myself - I'm not really depressed to the point where I can't enjoy anything anymore - but even still it's just not the same anymore. Life has lost its shine a bit and a lot of the time everything feels a bit pointless. I'm trying to meet new people and make new friends too, but I'm pretty insecure about it to be honest. Sometimes to the point where I wonder if all that effort is really worth it.

Still, I could be doing a lot worse and I am thankful that I've not completely collapsed and that I'm functioning reasonably well. Reading this back now, it sounds more negative than it actually is. I can't expect a grieving process to be over after just one year. Finding new meaning/purpose in life takes time, that's all, and all things considering I'm actually not doing too bad :). My faith is also a source of support to keep me standing up, but I'd rather not get into that in this thread - this is not the thread for arguing the merits of religion.

scumble on 26/6/2018 at 09:44

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Intense feelings for someone can do strange things to you. I haven't even really got over the first girl I obsessed over and actually got to like me before apparently losing interest. I'm not even sure what happened there but I'm still liable to think about her after 30 years. Even now I'm pretty sure I'm not cut out for a relationship at all and should focus on my close family. I even work over feelings I had for the two relationships I've had that I'm glad to be rid of. I can't really imagine what it's like to lose someone you're happy with.

I've hit 40 and I could really do with not chewing over the past any more. Still here and doing generally ok despite a vague feeling I've mostly lived the wrong life according to someone else's ideas. But often I'm just too tired out to appreciate that I'm quite lucky even in the distribution of autistic people.

Harvester on 1/7/2018 at 10:42

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The same to you, Gray. Sorry to hear you also lost your wife. Take care.