Give Me Hope: Personal Stories of Turning it All Around
October 6, 2022 8:29 AM Subscribe
I have had, by all objective standards, a really shitty few years and after yet another big disappointment I am finding it hard it to hold on to any optimism about my future. I would love to hear any and all stories from folks who went through really rough times and came out on the other side happy, particularly in mid/later life. My specific sad sack story inside.
Since 2020, the following things have happened to me:
-I finished my grad degree and was selected by my department to be hired for a full-time lectureship. This was literally my dream job and I worked my ass off to get it; due to the pandemic hiring was frozen, and there went that.
-So I had to relocate to a state I hated and a job that was devastating for my mental health. So much so that I ended up being placed on a medical leave of absence/not having my contract renewed.
-This left me with no options but to move in with my emotionally abusive parents, and you can read all about how fun that has been in my question history.
-I finally got better enough to re-enter the workforce. I am now making about 1/3rd of what I made at the height of my professional life. It is not enough to ever move out. I had an interview this week for a dream job that would solve all my problems. I didn't get it.
-Did I mention I'm deeply in debt and my credit score is trashed?
-I'm single and childless and always wanted a family, but I'm approaching 40 and who wants to date a failure who lives with her parents anyway?
Typing this out I realize how woe is me it all sounds, but I am deep in wallowing mode right now, hence why I could borrow some hope from y'all. How did your life recover when everything seemed lost?
-
Since 2020, the following things have happened to me:
-I finished my grad degree and was selected by my department to be hired for a full-time lectureship. This was literally my dream job and I worked my ass off to get it; due to the pandemic hiring was frozen, and there went that.
-So I had to relocate to a state I hated and a job that was devastating for my mental health. So much so that I ended up being placed on a medical leave of absence/not having my contract renewed.
-This left me with no options but to move in with my emotionally abusive parents, and you can read all about how fun that has been in my question history.
-I finally got better enough to re-enter the workforce. I am now making about 1/3rd of what I made at the height of my professional life. It is not enough to ever move out. I had an interview this week for a dream job that would solve all my problems. I didn't get it.
-Did I mention I'm deeply in debt and my credit score is trashed?
-I'm single and childless and always wanted a family, but I'm approaching 40 and who wants to date a failure who lives with her parents anyway?
Typing this out I realize how woe is me it all sounds, but I am deep in wallowing mode right now, hence why I could borrow some hope from y'all. How did your life recover when everything seemed lost?
-
i'm an old. i had a big crisis and mental health collapse in 2019. lost some jobs, pretty isolated. very disillusioned. seconding counseling. stay hopeful.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:06 AM on October 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by j_curiouser at 9:06 AM on October 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
I left a bad relationship. I went home to stay with my parents for a while. I didn't love living there, so I worked two jobs (cleaning hotel rooms and serving at a rainforest-themed family restaurant) and saved up tiny bit of money.
I came back to the city. I found a place with roommates (do you know anyone who goes to Burning Man? People who go to Burning Man seem to always know people who are looking for roommates and live in cool affordable houses and are supportive, creative people who don't really care if you're an adult who isn't up to cleaning your shower right now.) I eventually started cleaning my shower, and went to some fun hangouts and enjoyed my roommates even though we didn't really become friends.
I found the world's worst basement suite that was cheap because the ceilings were only 6.5 feet high, and the whole thing was painted dark brown, walls and ceiling. It was close to my new job where I made a whopping $10 an hour. But I could afford it. I lived alone. I read books, I listened to music, I cooked a little. I got a slight raise at work. I started paying off my debts. I cleaned and painted and decorated my basement suite and started to feel happy. I met a man I liked a lot on OkCupid.
A flood destroyed my home and everything I owned. (this isn't an exaggeration, the house is actually gone now, and sewage backed up into our neighbourhood and apparently my suite had a "false floor" so it just filled up with sewage to above counter height - I was advised to get rid of everything that was in the suite when it happened, which was everything I had.)
SO MANY PEOPLE CAME TO HELP ME. honestly this was a big positive moment in my life, even though it was unequivocally one of the worst things that ever happened to me. People just came out of the woodwork. I realized that people want to help you, and can help you, and love you. I started to ask people and organizations for help when I needed it (seriously, get debt counselling if you can! Call whoever your loans are with and tell them whats going on! I got so many interest freezes and principle reductions and delayed payments).
Me and my okcupid man bought a house. My credit wasn't great, but his was good. We got married, then sold our house and bought a new house - technically a worse house, but better for us. I got raises at my job every year (because I'm good at it, and got better) until it became a good job.
I didn't do anything to turn it around, other than not give up. I just kept trying to push that boulder back up the mountain, and eventually the mountain disappeared.
A positive thing that I learned from my abusive relationship (haha) is that having suffering in your life is a way to make "fine" feel amazing. I often really appreciate my decent job and my nice husband and my small, affordable house, and my nice friends and my small talents and free time. Would anyone else look at my life and be jealous? doubtful. But it's a hell of a life!
posted by euphoria066 at 9:36 AM on October 6, 2022 [43 favorites]
I came back to the city. I found a place with roommates (do you know anyone who goes to Burning Man? People who go to Burning Man seem to always know people who are looking for roommates and live in cool affordable houses and are supportive, creative people who don't really care if you're an adult who isn't up to cleaning your shower right now.) I eventually started cleaning my shower, and went to some fun hangouts and enjoyed my roommates even though we didn't really become friends.
I found the world's worst basement suite that was cheap because the ceilings were only 6.5 feet high, and the whole thing was painted dark brown, walls and ceiling. It was close to my new job where I made a whopping $10 an hour. But I could afford it. I lived alone. I read books, I listened to music, I cooked a little. I got a slight raise at work. I started paying off my debts. I cleaned and painted and decorated my basement suite and started to feel happy. I met a man I liked a lot on OkCupid.
A flood destroyed my home and everything I owned. (this isn't an exaggeration, the house is actually gone now, and sewage backed up into our neighbourhood and apparently my suite had a "false floor" so it just filled up with sewage to above counter height - I was advised to get rid of everything that was in the suite when it happened, which was everything I had.)
SO MANY PEOPLE CAME TO HELP ME. honestly this was a big positive moment in my life, even though it was unequivocally one of the worst things that ever happened to me. People just came out of the woodwork. I realized that people want to help you, and can help you, and love you. I started to ask people and organizations for help when I needed it (seriously, get debt counselling if you can! Call whoever your loans are with and tell them whats going on! I got so many interest freezes and principle reductions and delayed payments).
Me and my okcupid man bought a house. My credit wasn't great, but his was good. We got married, then sold our house and bought a new house - technically a worse house, but better for us. I got raises at my job every year (because I'm good at it, and got better) until it became a good job.
I didn't do anything to turn it around, other than not give up. I just kept trying to push that boulder back up the mountain, and eventually the mountain disappeared.
A positive thing that I learned from my abusive relationship (haha) is that having suffering in your life is a way to make "fine" feel amazing. I often really appreciate my decent job and my nice husband and my small, affordable house, and my nice friends and my small talents and free time. Would anyone else look at my life and be jealous? doubtful. But it's a hell of a life!
posted by euphoria066 at 9:36 AM on October 6, 2022 [43 favorites]
I've moved back in with my mom twice as an adult. The first was when I was 25. I had gone to law school straight from undergrad, and I hated it immediately. It probably only took me two weeks to decide that I was going to drop out, but I'd already paid tuition and had a lease on an apartment, so I stuck around the entire year. Sort of. I remained enrolled in classes, but as I became more and more depressed, my attendance became more and more sporadic. I made it to the end of the year, where we had a "you can't fire me, I quit" moment. Not knowing what else to do, I moved back to where I went to undergrad and re-enrolled in undergrad classes intending to finish a second major and then go on to grad school. Things went OK, but money was tight, and the combination of student loans and retail work wasn't covering my bills, so, lacking any other options, I had to move back in with my mom. It wasn't super traumatic for me; I was dealing with some mental health stuff around the time I moved back in, but most of the time I lived at home I just felt like a failure. I would be careful about going to the grocery, in case I ran into someone I knew from high school who would ask me what I was up to. But eventually I found a job and moved back out on my own.
Then when I was 30, I moved across the country with the girl I was dating at the time when she started grad school. I'd been looking for ways to get out of the job I was working, and felt confident that I'd be able to get a job in the new city pretty quickly. I never really got a chance; she broke up with me two months in, because, in her words, my future earning potential was too low. I had to move out of the apartment, and, with no job to get another one, I had nowhere to go but home again. I floundered for a while, eventually getting a job at a homeowners insurance call center in my hometown. Turns out to be one of the most fortuitous things that's ever happened to me. I worked at that call center for six months, saving money to move back out on my own. Then a friend got me a job in the big city where I'd gone to undergrad, and I moved back out into an apartment of my own. Three months after moving back, I met the woman who would become my wife on OKCupid - she actually lived next door to me. We started dating, and she helped me focus my career goals a bit. I kept thinking back to how much I enjoyed working at that insurance call center, so I found a job doing tech support at an insurance software company, which nearly doubled my salary, and over the next few years climbed the ladder until I got my current job, in the IT department of an insurance company. I make enough money that we could probably survive on my salary alone, I've got some savings, we've been married for eight years, and we have two kids. I don't want to say "and it's all because I worked at some random call center while I was living at home as a 30 year old", but... it kinda is. Prior to that, I'd had "professional" jobs, but I'd never made more than $26k in a year, and I didn't really see a lot of career paths that would change that. I didn't expect that call center to be any different - it only paid $10.49/hour. But like I said, I used it as one step on the ladder, and then I kept climbing.
I don't know if you'll find this story helpful, but I know at least one person already has. My mom's boss's kid, who's like eight years younger than me, pulled the same career path a few years later: dropping out of law school, moving back home, working at this call center. Ordinarily my mom's boss probably would have been a bit displeased by this. She's a lawyer, so her kid going to law school was a lot more socially acceptable than her kid working at a call center. But my experience chilled her out a little, made her see that good things could come of it, and indeed they did. The kid also liked the call center, to the point where he now works as an executive in the company's corporate headquarters in Atlanta.
posted by kevinbelt at 10:42 AM on October 6, 2022 [11 favorites]
Then when I was 30, I moved across the country with the girl I was dating at the time when she started grad school. I'd been looking for ways to get out of the job I was working, and felt confident that I'd be able to get a job in the new city pretty quickly. I never really got a chance; she broke up with me two months in, because, in her words, my future earning potential was too low. I had to move out of the apartment, and, with no job to get another one, I had nowhere to go but home again. I floundered for a while, eventually getting a job at a homeowners insurance call center in my hometown. Turns out to be one of the most fortuitous things that's ever happened to me. I worked at that call center for six months, saving money to move back out on my own. Then a friend got me a job in the big city where I'd gone to undergrad, and I moved back out into an apartment of my own. Three months after moving back, I met the woman who would become my wife on OKCupid - she actually lived next door to me. We started dating, and she helped me focus my career goals a bit. I kept thinking back to how much I enjoyed working at that insurance call center, so I found a job doing tech support at an insurance software company, which nearly doubled my salary, and over the next few years climbed the ladder until I got my current job, in the IT department of an insurance company. I make enough money that we could probably survive on my salary alone, I've got some savings, we've been married for eight years, and we have two kids. I don't want to say "and it's all because I worked at some random call center while I was living at home as a 30 year old", but... it kinda is. Prior to that, I'd had "professional" jobs, but I'd never made more than $26k in a year, and I didn't really see a lot of career paths that would change that. I didn't expect that call center to be any different - it only paid $10.49/hour. But like I said, I used it as one step on the ladder, and then I kept climbing.
I don't know if you'll find this story helpful, but I know at least one person already has. My mom's boss's kid, who's like eight years younger than me, pulled the same career path a few years later: dropping out of law school, moving back home, working at this call center. Ordinarily my mom's boss probably would have been a bit displeased by this. She's a lawyer, so her kid going to law school was a lot more socially acceptable than her kid working at a call center. But my experience chilled her out a little, made her see that good things could come of it, and indeed they did. The kid also liked the call center, to the point where he now works as an executive in the company's corporate headquarters in Atlanta.
posted by kevinbelt at 10:42 AM on October 6, 2022 [11 favorites]
when i was 29 the recession happened and both my partner and i lost our jobs. 2.5 years of unemployment in a big city, with no family, food stamps application denied, skipping meals because we didn't have the money, etc. it was rough. she got a job and things started to get better. then when i was 34 she broke up with me out of the blue. i seriously did not expect it and was devastated. i moved cross country to live in my parents' literal basement in the middle of nowhere. i was in debt, i was working freelance and at macy's, i didn't have a car, and didn't know anyone. and i was living with my parents at 34.
a happenstance trip downstate for a baby shower led me to meeting up with an old high school friend who i had always had a crush on. we ended up dating and next week is our 8 year anniversary. i got a job i hated but mostly paid my bills, and my boyfriend helped when i needed it. then i got a devastating health diagnosis. then i got a raise and then the pandemic happened and we got those stimulus checks and i was able to pay off all my debt. then i got a new job which tripled my salary.
i have treatment resistant depression, so i am not a happy jolly person. but at 42 i am content with my life and love my boyfriend and my tiny apartment and my cats. so it is possible to "turn it around."
honestly, the money part was key. not having that debt looming over me was the most freeing thing. it dramatically improved my mental health. i suggest if you work on anything immediately, it's getting the debt paid off. if, however, you think something else might be THE THING, then focus on that.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 11:52 AM on October 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
a happenstance trip downstate for a baby shower led me to meeting up with an old high school friend who i had always had a crush on. we ended up dating and next week is our 8 year anniversary. i got a job i hated but mostly paid my bills, and my boyfriend helped when i needed it. then i got a devastating health diagnosis. then i got a raise and then the pandemic happened and we got those stimulus checks and i was able to pay off all my debt. then i got a new job which tripled my salary.
i have treatment resistant depression, so i am not a happy jolly person. but at 42 i am content with my life and love my boyfriend and my tiny apartment and my cats. so it is possible to "turn it around."
honestly, the money part was key. not having that debt looming over me was the most freeing thing. it dramatically improved my mental health. i suggest if you work on anything immediately, it's getting the debt paid off. if, however, you think something else might be THE THING, then focus on that.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 11:52 AM on October 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'll try to write my story later, but for now... I think if you want to read story after story after story about Turning It All Around, you might read a biography of Winston Churchill. The man was a setback magnet throughout his life. He's also the one, I believe, who famously said, "When you're going through Hell, KEEP GOING." I don't know but I suspect what he may have meant was: when in the darkest and hardest part of your journey that is the time when it's most important to continue taking steps, no matter how small, for just one of those steps might (seen only in retrospect, perhaps) be the first step on the path from where you are towards the place you'd much rather be.
Posting an AskMe can be a small first step. Good onya for taking it!
I've written previously about the importance of letting people around you -- and even (especially?) strangers or those you don't know well -- hear what's going on with you. Some of the most remarkable and transformational things can come as a result of someone hearing what challenge you're dealing with, and telling you something completely new and unexpected, about how they bested a similar challenge.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 1:35 PM on October 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
Posting an AskMe can be a small first step. Good onya for taking it!
I've written previously about the importance of letting people around you -- and even (especially?) strangers or those you don't know well -- hear what's going on with you. Some of the most remarkable and transformational things can come as a result of someone hearing what challenge you're dealing with, and telling you something completely new and unexpected, about how they bested a similar challenge.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 1:35 PM on October 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
When I was 30, I finished my masters, and promptly had a succession of three terrible, underpaid jobs in three different cities in 16 months. By the end of that, I was broke, had defaulted on one of my student loans (thankfully the smaller, private one), burnt out, and dealing with debilitating fatigue and other health issues. And it was also the beginning of the Great Recession so I couldn't find another job. So I wound up moving back in with my parents. It took me 8 months to find another job, again underpaid, that I was very overqualified for, all the way across the country.
That move wound up changing my life. Within a year, I had gotten a much better job with the same employer, which set me on a career path I was much better-suited to. Being in one place allowed me to see doctors and get my health issues sorted out. I also got diagnosed with ADHD and started treatment for it. It turned out the city I moved to was my true home and I have since built an amazing community of friends and found family here. Career-wise, I've had amazing opportunities, and I'm making almost three times what I made at that first recession job. I even have good credit. (Even defaulting on my student loan wound up ok - once the 7 year period ended, the creditor unexpectedly forgave the loan.)
When all this happened, I felt like the ground had fallen out from under me and that I'd never be able to build a stable, satisfying life for myself. I wish I could have seen how things would turn out.
posted by the sockening at 4:46 PM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
That move wound up changing my life. Within a year, I had gotten a much better job with the same employer, which set me on a career path I was much better-suited to. Being in one place allowed me to see doctors and get my health issues sorted out. I also got diagnosed with ADHD and started treatment for it. It turned out the city I moved to was my true home and I have since built an amazing community of friends and found family here. Career-wise, I've had amazing opportunities, and I'm making almost three times what I made at that first recession job. I even have good credit. (Even defaulting on my student loan wound up ok - once the 7 year period ended, the creditor unexpectedly forgave the loan.)
When all this happened, I felt like the ground had fallen out from under me and that I'd never be able to build a stable, satisfying life for myself. I wish I could have seen how things would turn out.
posted by the sockening at 4:46 PM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
I've been interested in tech since about 2015. I had a series of office jobs, learned the software I could when I could, and still got nowhere for years. I was incredibly jaded because I heard all those years that "your skills are totally transferrable, you don't need a degree, tons of people get into tech without experience" which... might work for some but never did for me.
After working remotely during 2020-21, I didn't even realize how burned out and depressed I was at my last office job. It became clear to me in spring 2021 that our remote days were numbered and I simply could not go back to that office and sit at a stupid desk for 8 hours. So I finally started getting really serious about scoping out doing a degree or bootcamp in tech. I took my first programming class, did a ton of research on the fastest, cheapest, etc options, and set a goal that I would quit my job by January 2022.
By fall 2021, they did indeed make us come back to the office. I had lined up a couple interviews for some bootcamp scholarships and... I got one! I quit my job the second week they made us come back. It was glorious.
My original goal was to quit my old job by January 2022. I ended up starting my new job as a software engineer by then. It was a salary bump, but more than that, it's work I actually find interesting and able to grow into. I'm still constantly amazed that I 'made it'. It's easy to minimize my own work as saying I just finally got lucky, but I put years of frustration and boredom into my final push to make it happen.
posted by nakedmolerats at 7:01 PM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
After working remotely during 2020-21, I didn't even realize how burned out and depressed I was at my last office job. It became clear to me in spring 2021 that our remote days were numbered and I simply could not go back to that office and sit at a stupid desk for 8 hours. So I finally started getting really serious about scoping out doing a degree or bootcamp in tech. I took my first programming class, did a ton of research on the fastest, cheapest, etc options, and set a goal that I would quit my job by January 2022.
By fall 2021, they did indeed make us come back to the office. I had lined up a couple interviews for some bootcamp scholarships and... I got one! I quit my job the second week they made us come back. It was glorious.
My original goal was to quit my old job by January 2022. I ended up starting my new job as a software engineer by then. It was a salary bump, but more than that, it's work I actually find interesting and able to grow into. I'm still constantly amazed that I 'made it'. It's easy to minimize my own work as saying I just finally got lucky, but I put years of frustration and boredom into my final push to make it happen.
posted by nakedmolerats at 7:01 PM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
If you're open to stories of non-MeFites - along the lines of armoir from antproof case's mention of Winston Churchill, you might find hope in the story of President Harry Truman:
Truman couldn't get into the college he'd always dreamed of so he tried business school, but he only managed one semester. He started his own business when he was 35, but it went bankrupt. It took him 13 years to pay off the debts. He tried taking night classes in law when he was 40, but he dropped out. But around the same time, he got an administrative job with the courts. That led to other jobs with the county, and then with the state. When he was 50, he was elected to the US Senate, and when he was 61, he became President.
I'm so sorry things have been so hard for so long. The one idea that always sticks in my head is: you never know what's going to happen. Some really good thing could come out of nowhere when you least expect it.
I know everyone in this thread is pulling for you. Here's hoping some random strokes of good luck crash into your life in the very near future.
posted by kristi at 7:25 PM on October 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
Truman couldn't get into the college he'd always dreamed of so he tried business school, but he only managed one semester. He started his own business when he was 35, but it went bankrupt. It took him 13 years to pay off the debts. He tried taking night classes in law when he was 40, but he dropped out. But around the same time, he got an administrative job with the courts. That led to other jobs with the county, and then with the state. When he was 50, he was elected to the US Senate, and when he was 61, he became President.
I'm so sorry things have been so hard for so long. The one idea that always sticks in my head is: you never know what's going to happen. Some really good thing could come out of nowhere when you least expect it.
I know everyone in this thread is pulling for you. Here's hoping some random strokes of good luck crash into your life in the very near future.
posted by kristi at 7:25 PM on October 6, 2022 [3 favorites]
I want to say to you—genuinely—that your tough times are going to be moments that you look back on with some mixture of pride, wonder, and compassion. These tough times are a forge that you are inside of, and you are being asked by circumstances how you wish to proceed. Those circumstances are brutal, uncaring, maybe even random. And yet, you still must find a way to get from day to day. Ideally, you will find a way to take steps that are always in line with what you value most, no matter how incremental or stepwise or seemingly insignificant they seem, even those steps that feel lateral or somehow backward.
You can dive into my 2018-2019 in this one Ask. When I worte this, I honestly felt like I was cursed and would be cursed until I died. I had lost touch with my sense of self, with my passions, with a trajectory. My family was dissolving right before my eyes, no matter how hard I grasped: my husband transformed into an endless well of cruelty, my kids aged out of being minors and were striking out on their own, my dog got so ill she had to be put down, and I went into surgery and medical treatment fully divorced (literally) from the support system that I'd counted on for more than a decade. It was harrowing. But!
I started therapy. First as triage, then as a guide. This was a boon of a resource. I invested a huge amount of my available energy into making sure my relationships with my kids was preserved, strengthened, reinforced for our new lives. I leaned so incredibly hard on my friends, some of whom dropped everything to fly thousands of miles to support me, one after another. I got outside as much as possible. I also endured/put myself through a fair amount of the doldroms—I drank myself into unconsciousness often, I made bad decisions about sex and false relationships, I smoked a lot of weed, I started smoking cigarettes again, and I felt very, very bad for myself. I wallowed in my misery because that's what misery calls for. It was a kind of self-soothing, I think. And then I reached the end of it, the end of feeling like I needed it. That was the most amazing part to me: one day it was simply true that I felt like my misery was 1% less than it had been the day before. And a few days later there was another 1-2% gone. And one day the following month I laughed... I spontaneously laughed at something for the first time in a year or more. And it surprised the hell out of me. I felt the trajectory of my spirit again, I could feel it emerging from the fog of grief.
From then I set out on a mission to focus on what makes humans resilient in the face of adversity. I went to weekly therapy for a year, and I paid through the nose for it with money that I barely had to give. It was worth it. I plotted a course for my coming year. I reaffirmed my values, I reminded myself of my boundaries, and I charted a course. It's a couple years later and we're still in the pandemic that came just as I felt like I was getting on my feet. I'm a world away from where I had been—about 8,000 miles away, give or take. My head is on my shoulders. My pat is where it belongs. I'm rooted in the present and the pains it brings. I am grateful tha I survived my recent trials and tribulations, because I know more will come in my life. So I continue to focus on how I can make sure that I'm learning how to be more resilient, more true to myself, and live depsite harship.
You will get here.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:14 AM on October 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
You can dive into my 2018-2019 in this one Ask. When I worte this, I honestly felt like I was cursed and would be cursed until I died. I had lost touch with my sense of self, with my passions, with a trajectory. My family was dissolving right before my eyes, no matter how hard I grasped: my husband transformed into an endless well of cruelty, my kids aged out of being minors and were striking out on their own, my dog got so ill she had to be put down, and I went into surgery and medical treatment fully divorced (literally) from the support system that I'd counted on for more than a decade. It was harrowing. But!
I started therapy. First as triage, then as a guide. This was a boon of a resource. I invested a huge amount of my available energy into making sure my relationships with my kids was preserved, strengthened, reinforced for our new lives. I leaned so incredibly hard on my friends, some of whom dropped everything to fly thousands of miles to support me, one after another. I got outside as much as possible. I also endured/put myself through a fair amount of the doldroms—I drank myself into unconsciousness often, I made bad decisions about sex and false relationships, I smoked a lot of weed, I started smoking cigarettes again, and I felt very, very bad for myself. I wallowed in my misery because that's what misery calls for. It was a kind of self-soothing, I think. And then I reached the end of it, the end of feeling like I needed it. That was the most amazing part to me: one day it was simply true that I felt like my misery was 1% less than it had been the day before. And a few days later there was another 1-2% gone. And one day the following month I laughed... I spontaneously laughed at something for the first time in a year or more. And it surprised the hell out of me. I felt the trajectory of my spirit again, I could feel it emerging from the fog of grief.
From then I set out on a mission to focus on what makes humans resilient in the face of adversity. I went to weekly therapy for a year, and I paid through the nose for it with money that I barely had to give. It was worth it. I plotted a course for my coming year. I reaffirmed my values, I reminded myself of my boundaries, and I charted a course. It's a couple years later and we're still in the pandemic that came just as I felt like I was getting on my feet. I'm a world away from where I had been—about 8,000 miles away, give or take. My head is on my shoulders. My pat is where it belongs. I'm rooted in the present and the pains it brings. I am grateful tha I survived my recent trials and tribulations, because I know more will come in my life. So I continue to focus on how I can make sure that I'm learning how to be more resilient, more true to myself, and live depsite harship.
You will get here.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:14 AM on October 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
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Took a few psychology classes so I wouldn't just be doing nothing. Applied for a different grad program at the insistence of my mother. Got accepted and had to move in with her. She was emotionally abusive and my body did NOT want me to be there. Grad school was awful. Boring, and I broke a lot of the cultural expectations because nobody told me they were different from where I came from. Had a come to Jesus with the dept head and basically a "no man's land" internship placement because they thought I was a lost cause with no business in my field of human services.
Now I have a position at one of the most competitive healthcare agencies in my jurisdiction and I constantly have to resist the urge to publicly shame my grad program for their ableist assumptions about me (I.e. I had undiagnosed autism causing social perception issues and had nothing actually wrong in my ability to do the type of work I do).
I'm married with a kid. People have kids later now and there are many children that can benefit from adoption so don't define "family" too narrowly.
I am on the public student loan forgiveness program. I would never have paid those loans off so I didn't even try. The interest kept them at six figures.
My credit was shit after my severe depression/grief reaction. It is now over 700.
I was in my late 20s when I hit rock bottom and failed all the students that signed up for my courses based on how awesome the students all found me as a teacher (right up to that horrible semester). It's been about ten years since all that happened. You can climb out of it but it's not necessarily an instant change.
Just keep swimming. And get therapy if you can.
posted by crunchy potato at 8:46 AM on October 6, 2022 [7 favorites]