63 years old and depressed

by Don
(South Florida)

I've always been asocial and subject to mood swings. When I was in college I had my first long-lasting period of negativity that took over a year to recover from. It was one of the worst times in my life in that I'd gone from a creative and productive lifestyle into a reclusive one filled with self loathing and a sense of inadequacy. I inherited from my parents a supercilious and egotistical nature made worse by a sense of snobbery. But I was always aware of the foolishness and error of my way of thinking. I just have never gotten along with others all of my life, partly due to my overly sensitive and artistic nature which has always been made even worse by my natural but hurtful failures and overly self critical mind.
Now I'm 63, and have been through 2 painful divorces and am left living alone in Florida with no sense of hopefulness or happiness at all. I'm not suicidal since I'm relatively healthy and can survive on the little I've inherited, but since my Dad died (2001) and I lost my business (2004) in which I designed custom furniture, I haven't been myself and will never regain that optimism I normally had. I don't even enjoy playing my electric keyboards anymore and have had no desire to write and record original music for 3 or 4 years.
I find myself up to my old tricks of destroying any relationship I have and despising people in general so now I'm left with only 2 or 3 friends who live 1000 miles away (up north) and my brother who has had 2 lung transplants and who doesn't want me to live with him and his wife since I probably would make his life even more difficult. Besides that, he's as supercilious as I am, although he suffers no depression and seems to be quite happy with his wife in the suburbs of New York.
That's not to say that I don't every now and then swing back into feeling nice, especially since the weather is so lovely here, but I never find anyone who's company I enjoy and I don't enjoy exercise or travel anymore. My days and nights are only filled with reading, researching banal matters on the internet, and watching satellite T.V., all of which don't offer me much more than just the passage of time.
Since I've always been self-absorbed and reclusive, it's not a prison sentence and I actually feel more fortunate than most others in that I'm virtually free of the worries I once had. But nothing new ever seems to happen, and as I get older I feel a little less able to cope every day. I pray reincarnation is a myth so I don't have to relive the inevitable end as well as the intermediate pains of life.
I once was on anti-depressants but they never worked for me and they seemed to make things slightly worse in the end. I don't trust or like seeing doctors or psychiatrists and don't want to become dependent on medicines to correct things, and I have little faith in them, to boot.
Not only that, but since I only go out to eat and buy necessities I rarely meet anybody new and I don't enjoy social gatherings and have always detested parties. I'm virtually dependent upon happenstance to bring any change in my life and am incapable of creating anything new at all in my life. Although I'm able to deal with all this, I feel there's very little left other than decreasing health and deterioration of my attractiveness to women. Not only that but I only enjoy the company of women that are at least 20 years younger than I am unless their beauty is way out of my league.
Naturally, I know I should force myself to socialize and exercise and think more positively, but I'm so self absorbed and negative in my outlook it just isn't in the cards for me to maintain any new friendships I find myself occasionally acquiring. I'm far too critical both of others and of myself for any change in the way I've always been. My mother was the same way and although she was extremely intelligent, her asocial personality never brought her any genuine happiness. The thought of living out 20 more years of this, only to lose the few relations I still have seems horrible, but I would never hurt myself. I want to help myself, not make things even worse.
But life holds no new surprises for me, especially since I've failed at every single relationship I've ever had and I don't really believe I should depend on that to bring me fulfillment or joy. I feel people, myself included, are for the most part selfish and uninteresting, particularly since my tastes are esoteric and unusual. I feel my depression is actually quite commonplace, but that doesn't mitigate the pain. Even when I understand the errors of my thinking, I'm incapable of altering my mindset. I realize that even had I been famous and popular, I still would be this way, even worse since I would be open to public criticism and personal attacks, so I have no regrets that I was never a commercial success.
When I was writing and recording original music or creating custom furniture and artwork for my customers, I was happily content, merely for the sense of self satisfaction. I enjoyed listening to my CD's of my music for years, just for personal enjoyment and don't care much if others enjoy them the same as I do. In fact I dislike the ego rush I feel when someone compliments me, since I know it's artificial and unproductive. So what it boils down to is I'm stuck in a rut and every path I pursue leads to the some dead end. It's a pity since when I was younger I was filled with optimism and joy from learning anything new. I find myself reading the tail end of most biographies to see how others lived out their last years, and I'm actually pleased when I see the failures and declines of famous successful people, just to know I'm not alone in my depressive and miserable state. I don't know how to jump into a new life and in all honesty, I don't feel there's very much enjoyment left for me in my remaining years, even if I'm not a drunk or a libertine.
However in the back of my mind I find a faint sense of hopefulness that I'll meet someone whose company I can enjoy and can afford me some sense of companionship or even better, love. But then I look back at how my self-destructive nature has a way of always collapsing anything I develop and try to nurture due to my unpleasant and overly critical demeanor. If all this sounds awful, you've grasped the situation entirely. But such is life, and to expect an unreal purely positive condition is misleading and foolish. dddifferentdifferentdifferentdifferent.differentis misnButag somewhere in my future, although I know everyone's life ends in nothing more than death and decline and that's a miserable prospect, indeed.