First, some phrases I say to self (all depressing) that only reinforce my self-image as a loser. I tried remembering the list I wrote at Facebook, but this may be an incomplete recollection.
1 "I wish I had never been born."
2 "I wish I had died as a child or infant" or "I wish I was dead."
3 "No woman in her right mind is asking (to become my wife or for me to become her husband)."
4 "I am a natural born loser."
5 "No woman will ever love me in the future."
6 "I have been a failure at almost everything tried in adulthood."
Okay, maybe that last one was new and a bit wordy,not just a simple phrase. But it does lead into my next subject.
Now on to the second topic, so I might get a bit more long winded here (and yes, I have been told I'm more long-winded than profound).
One constant to my adult life has been repeated failure at things I want success with - academically, professional and romantically being the main areas.
After finishing a Bachelor of Arts (history major) in 1990, I went on to get in over my head with graduate school experience and fail at completing the thesis after earning a 4.0 average on 30 hours of coursework. Finishing college, with a 3.96 GPA, I had no plan until a few months before graduation I thought I could teach college even though I was a nervous public speaker who sometimes wanted to leave his body while speaking and return once I'd finished talking. Of course, now I suspect all my problems as a social being stem from undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome (and I say that because everything I've had problems with since a young age fits with the descriptions of those suffering with Asperger's). Burnt out by the graduate school experience, I DO NOT ever want to return to college for additional education thus limiting my options to some extent. My scattered work history of recent years has been filled with rejected job applications, rejections in the ten months I barely survived as a telemarketer (since that job I've been unable to get any similar job I've applied with), and only being able to get the most dead end jobs with low or minimum wage ever since.
Since 1999, I have sought professional recognition and success as a fiction author, but even that career decision took two years after a religious salvation experience changing my overall life. But starting in 2000, with marketing my first novel with some literary agents, I have been rejected or ignored by those middlemen of the publishing industry and the gatekeepers of the publishing companies, none of whom see any worth or talent in my writing output, I've only placed in ONE writing contest - the 2002 Science Fiction Writers of Earth Short Story Contest where my story "The Last Minutes for an Elf" placed eighth. I have never won or placed at any writing contest entered since. I was not published (in an exposure only anthology) until November 2009, and the first two such pubilcations came out in print around the same week I was laid off from my last full-time job. "Saved by a Damsel in Distress" appeared in Leucrota Press' Abaculus III anthology and "Last Stand in Zombie Land" appeared in Lame Goat Press' Horror through the Ages anthology. Oddly enough, both books are hard to find now since their small press publishers are not both technically out of business (but not impossible to find at Amazon.com). I have gone on to see print for my stories and poems at another five small press imprints - Aurora Wolf Press, Pill Hill Press, Shade City Press, Static Movement and Wicked East Press - but only had three token paid amount story sales all in 2011 and nothing since. Every time I submit to any magazine or anthology that is paying more than a few dollars or fractions of pennies per word rates, I get rejected (sometimes with constructive criticism but more often with form rejection letters). I have concluded the only way I will ever see print in any magazine is if I would be the publisher - and that will never happen anytime soon.
I have also self-published four novels, the sales figures for which have been poor to say the least - no one of them selling more than a half-dozen copies since the first one was released by CreateSpace in August 2011. I hesitate releasing any more for fear they will go equally unnoticed, unwanted and unappreciated as fiction. There are two problems contributing to this lackluster performance. One, I have been criticized (usually in a well-meaning way) for being too wordy with my prose, making too complicated sentences and being inaccessable to the average reader. Of course, I think upon how other unappreciated writers had styles that did not lend to mass popular appeal (H. P. Lovecraft comes to mind immediately) and have realized I may never gain widespread readership in my lifetime. Two, I'm sort of a socially inept person who does not know how to promote his career and has no talent as a book cover illustrator to make them more appealing. I also gratefully had a book accepted for publication at Fort Wayne, Indiana's Dark Moon Press (the young adult horror novel Claws of T'birsk) back in August that was published in early September 2012. I don't know how well it's doing, but hope better than my self-published works. The cover artwork by Drake Mefestta is certainly better than any of my self-published efforts. Of course I had to turn to self-publishing in 2011 after years of rejections by major and most minor book publishing companies who saw no commercial potential to what I wrote.
The most painful rejections in life have to be romantic rejections for obvious reasons. Since having my heart crushed in 1986 after adolescent years where I was unable to muster enough confidence about asking girls out on dates, and a few flippant requests that I expected to be rejected, I finally had the courage to try asking the girl of my dreams out after losing 50 pounds to impress her, only to have my limited confidence so shattered by the rejection that I never could ask any girl I was interested or intrigued by on a date since. Of course there were two different young ladies that seemed interested in me during college but in each case I fled from those opportunities (primarily becuase they were not my type - both being somewhat heavyset but not obese - one blonde my freshman year and a brown-haired brunette my last year as a graduate student). Apart from the lack of confidence and undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome, I'd say my greatest hurdle to finding a mate has been the lack of desire to become friends with any woman first. I have few close friends, none of recent vintage, and have for years held the immature viewpoint that a man cannot befriend any woman he is sexually attracted to openly or in secret. In other words, I never sought a best buddy with boobs. I can be casual friends or acquanited with just about any woman, but the association remains superficial at best. I fear this sort of rejection the most and believe if ever rejected by any woman I desire again the heartbreak will literally kill me. I mean look how much that stupid cow (no, actually she was her high school class' valedictorian and graduated with high honors from college) who broke my heart in 1986 still tears at me, even though she's now been dead for more than eight years.
I tried going to online dating sites in 2011 and 2012 only to find the divorced (some sexually hot, sadly for me because I will not marry any divorced woman due to Biblical prohibitions), the single mother types, occasional widows and the average to fugly of desperate loneliness. The few ladies I was attracted to based on their profile either never responded to my inquiries or rejected them politely. The few nibbles on my fishing line fell into three categories: 1. The phony scammer from some foreign conntry who was in fact young men pretending to fall in love at the drop of a hat. 2. The female scammer who suckered me in with a sob story and lovely photos that may have not been really what she looked like and almost conned me out of $500. 3. The locally available plain younger woman whose profile had too many clues that suggested we would never be compatible or happy together. I have no plans to try Christian Mingle, Match, Plenty of Fish or any other dating website ever again (eHarmony rejected me after I took their free dating profile). It would take an act of God or some other unexpected miracle to meet the woman who is ideal for me, since I lack the social skills to go out and find anyone suitable. But I know now that God doesn't care if I ever find love with a woman, being jealous enough to want my devotion to Him alone probably, and because He only paired up three men in the Bible ever - Adam the first man, Isaac the son of Abraham and the Old Testament prophet Hosea. He usually lets men find their own wives, even though insisting on His blessing any such union. But I'm ill-equipped to ever seek out a soulmate and am unlikely in my curent situation to ever attract a suitable woman for marriage. I have no job, cannot get any job that pays well enough to make me seem attractive, am a failed professional writer (measured by sales and name recognition) and seem too old at 44 for any positive career prospects. And even if I did succeed at the writing in the near future, I don't want the future Mrs. John X. Grey to be attracted to the status and perks of my situation and not me for who I am (even though I loathe myself generally).
So, to sum up (if that's even possible for me), I was born to be a failure at most everything attempted in life after turning 18. I dwell on fantasy notions of going back into my past and using a more-mature mind scarred by bad experiences to avoid mistakes and take advantage of opportunities missed out of fear or social miscalculation, or becoming a completely different person by making sure I was born to someone else at a slightly later time (say 1969 instead of 1968) in the same country and state, just to different parents (two foreign born academics)whose genes would make me far more capable (possibly even a genius intellect instead of just above average) and maybe have black hair, lighter blue eyes (some almost unearthly shade women could never resist) and possibly one or two inches taller than I am. Of course, God will never permit any such grand alterations to one person's life or what I call a cosmic do-over to get a better outcome. He has made me the way I am - forever unhappy, unsatisfied and chronically lonely. I know things could've been worse as life outcomes go, but I still want a beter life in terms of certain qualities than I received - not perfect, just better. No wonder I say some of those things at the top of this post to myself.