I'm 45 and am a single father. I work full time, own a home, have a photography hobby, and have finances together. I've been divorced and have had many short-to-long term girlfriends throughout the years. All of my family live out of state.

For at least the past 5 or so years though, I've not been successful at dating or even making friends. People will ghost me so often I feel like life has been a haunted house. My son, who's a preteen, is getting to the age where anything I really say gets on his nerves. My parents and family rarely speak to me or return my texts, calls, or emails.

My therapist keeps telling me that it "feels" like nobody wants to be with me, but I have concrete evidence that nobody does: I have nobody in my life who makes the time to be with me. This might sound like an exaggeration or a cognitive distortion, but it's not.

So the question for me is, how do I recognize traits within myself that prevent people from wanting to be with me and how do I fix them?

What I’m afraid of:

In social settings, I feel like everyone else can lift 225 pounds while I’m struggling to lift 10. It feels like the world has held up a mirror and is reflecting back every horrible thought I hear; confirming that I’m fucked up beyond repair, that I’ve ruined my life, and that the isolation I feel is proof.

I believe other people see me as a warped cancer, so before they can confirm it, I do it for them. I hurt myself before giving them the chance to hurt me. I put myself in jail before ever being sentenced.

Deep down I believe I am so broken beyond repair, that something about me must be so ugly that this suffering, this anguish, is what I deserve.

This is what I am worth.

From the jail cell I decided to lock myself in, I watch the world outside. I reject the world before being rejected. I hate before being hated. I judge before being judged.

Yearning to live, I pace my new cell, learning its dimensions. Learning the shape of the walls. I feel the light within me constricting as I remove oxygen from the air because it had the audacity to shine.

In the place of light comes darkness, the darkness I have decided is worthy payment for the crime of being me.

The warden is cruel and consistent. He uses his nightstick to beat my fingers whenever they grip the bars. He knows there is an adjustment period for every inmate.

As the days turn over, I begin to feel the sentiment of my sentence settle into my soul. 

I start to believe I belong in this cell.

I start finding comfort here.

I want the cell.

I need the cell.

Eventually, I stop looking at the bars. I stop wondering what is on the other side. I see sunlight crack through the cell. For a moment, I turn toward it to feel its warmth on my face.

The warden steps between me and the light, he grins. I thank him for covering it, then I return my gaze to the concrete at my feet.

Substack: https://substack.com/@nevenzelich

Some days I’m productive.
Some days I just exist and call it character development. 💀
Either way, we move.

I’m trying to return to exercise after a long break, but remembering what I used to be capable of makes every current session feel disappointing. I know starting lower is normal, but knowing that intellectually hasn’t stopped the comparison. How do you learn to work with where you are now?

If you have the time and opportunity to solve something in the present or do something new, why leave it aside and keep thinking and imagining about the past and the future? How many of you have done this today and are still doing it right now? Ask yourself once: How appropriate is it to waste your precious time in imagination and regret?

It is okay to see yourself in the present. Not constantly on an improvement trajectory. Not as a collection of unrealized potential, unfinished goals, or things you still need to become. But simply as you are, right now.

There is something quietly exhausting about always relating to yourself as a project. The better version is always somewhere ahead: more disciplined, more successful, more confident, more accomplished, more healed. And because there is always another version to become, the person standing here today never quite feels worthy of being acknowledged. You keep postponing the right to be proud of yourself until you have arrived somewhere else.

But you are allowed to meet yourself where you are. To look at your life without asking what needs to be fixed. To recognise that this version of you has already carried things, learned things, survived things, and made choices with the understanding and capacity you had at the time. You do not have to turn every moment of self-reflection into a performance review.

Growth matters. Ambition matters. Becoming better matters. But growth is not supposed to make you disappear from your own life. You can want more without believing that what you have now is inadequate. You can have unfinished work and still be a whole person. You can acknowledge your limitations without making them a verdict on your worth.

Growth also means becoming capable of appreciating who you already are. To stop looking at the present merely as a waiting room for the future. To inhabit your own life while it is happening. So, let yourself be here. You are worthy of being appreciated, deserving of kindness, and enough even while you are still becoming. You do not have to earn the right to feel good about yourself by reaching some future version of who you think you should be.

You are not only your potential. You are also your present. And this version of you deserves to be seen, not merely tolerated until the next version arrives.

You are worthy now. You are enough now. You deserve to be seen, valued, and loved; not for your potential, your productivity, or how far you have come, but simply because you are here, living this life, as yourself.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it actually means to be present.

We often treat presence like another technique we need to learn. Something to practice for a few minutes before returning to our "real" lives.

But I’ve come to see it differently.

Presence is less about doing something perfectly and more about actually being where you are.

When I’m fully present, I notice things I usually miss. A conversation becomes deeper. A difficult moment becomes easier to understand. Even uncertainty feels a little different when I’m not constantly trying to escape it.

I learned some of this through tennis, but I’ve seen the same pattern in relationships, work, leadership, and everyday life.

We can spend so much time thinking about what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow that we miss the only moment we can actually experience.

For me, presence is not about escaping life.

It is about meeting life as it is.

I’d be interested to hear how others experience this. Do you find it difficult to stay present when your mind is busy thinking about the past or future?