Originally Posted by
ItsJustMe89 
I don't know. honestly, I don't know what it is going to take to turn me into a normal human being. I am everything except normal. I am all kinds of messed up. I don't know the first thing about being a normal, average, functional person. Much less about being a happy and content person.
I feel you. I have felt like this most of my life. With depression and anxiety and later alcoholism, I've often felt like I'm living in my own head and far too vulnerable for life.
The good news is that prolonged sobriety is helping more than I thought it could. While drinking (I had a stretch of sobriety then relapsed for a year and a half) I could remember intellectually that I felt calmer and happier sober. But I minimized it in my mind. Kind of like when I stop exercising, I'm like "yeah, I know I'd feel better" but then when I finally start again it's not just "OK, better" it's "OH WOW MY LIFE IS AMAZING NOW" and I can't believe I didn't start sooner. Getting back to sobriety has been like that for me.
And the non-alcohol advice I have is that I always am trying to maneuver myself into a situation that's one factor better than my current. If at one job I like the people but feel like I'm kind of unimportant and also not sure that the work matters to me, the next time I look for a job where I like the people AND I feel valued even if I still don't care about the work. Then the next time I look for something more meaningful. Same with personal life. When I feel like I don't do anything new anymore, I sign up for an easy class, something low commitment to help jog me out of my funk. Then I sign up for something with a bit more of a commitment, etc.
It really makes a difference in terms of happiness. Having a sense of progress helps me be more tolerant of the things I don't like in my life.
Good luck. One of the best things someone told me when I was fresh off my relapse and told my sad story of losing a dream job to alcohol was, "If you got hired for that job, then you'll get hired for another dream job, because you have the qualities that made that happen the first time." So I'll tweak that to you: if you had the capacity to create deep and meaningful and supportive sober relationships before, you'll be able to do it again. And this time you'll be wiser from falling off the wagon. I think once you get past 90 days this time you'll start to see how much better sobriety gets. That was an important milestone for me.
