what was the worst time in your life

It wasn’t psychosis. I think it was adderall related and sleep deprivation related though. I thankfully never even came close to that edge again and hope I never do. Before then I didn’t think mental illness was a thing I would have to deal with in my life—thought of it as something other people struggled with but not me

Xp

i looked up conversion stories j., this is certainly not that

one of my best friends died of an overdose, and of all his friends I was chosen to speak at the funeral - I'd say I was somewhat close to his family, having known him since 8th grade and all. a couple weeks later it was revealed that one of my close family members had supplied the drugs and was going to be prosecuted criminally. two weeks later my dad's German Shepherd whom I loved very much was struck by a car and killed. through all of this my wife was pregnant with our 1st child. she nearly gave birth in the courtroom. for like two months I was unable to smile or laugh or anything. just spent all day in a haze. thankfully a rather light sentence (thank god for being white) & a healthy baby boy cleared it all up. looking back it's amazing that the whole process only took like two months. in my mind it felt like years.

a few are tied for the top spot tbh

Who is #1 on the charts of pain :P

In one year I went through divorce, job loss, and death of brother. And that year was 1999, so I was figuring if this Y2K thing *is* real maybe the world will end and put me out of my misery.

The summer after my first year of college, when I was 19, extraordinarily depressed, and lonely, was the worst time in my life.

one thing, i feel, that is good about this exercise is that you can see that nothing is permanent. even if you're not feeling great now, most of us hopefully emerged from their *worst* moment. so whatever is bothering us now will fade too.

55 Active Users 54 Active Users

my inspirational post was not that bad come on

didn't mean it like that! this is a safe space I hope.

Haha calzino otm

Top two worst times:

(I) At 18, starting a university course at some distant dismal campus, and realising I have absolutely no interest in it or the place. I lacked the agency or self-will to do anything about it and just drifted for a whole year, waiting to exit.

(ii) Earlier this year two co-workers teamed up to make my life a misery, and I found myself outed and various rumours about my sexuality doing the rounds of my organisation.

A gruelling period followed going through the drawn out disciplinary process for a few months. Ultimately though it was quite satisfying getting heavy with my management and politely threatening them with (i)legal action and (ii) being trashed by social media. A happy ending achieved, but it’s no exaggeration to say that at one point this year I was worrying about the situation continuously night and day.

Im surprised there are 50+ posters logged in, i feel like it’s usually a smaller crew

2010 - break up of 10 years

2018 - 2 beatings, 6 stitches a week ago from a suicidal duds who is going to court

Love you all and hope times stay ok

Dude. But he was a dud too.

In 2007 I lost a job, an apartment, my last living grandparent, ran out of money, got food poisoning, spent a while sleeping in my car and posting to ILX from free wi-fi near Venice Beach. Eventually I hightailed it out of Los Angeles in a secondhand Toyota to live with an eccentric, wealthy third cousin in the Bay Area. A thousand dollar loan got me out of extremis, but my eccentric cousin had some ~ deeply weird psychological problems ~ I got embroiled in, so I ended up in the PNW at his ex's condo a few months later. Somehow everything unkinked itself within a year or two, I fell in love and... spent the next five years (off ILX) rebuilding and moving cross-country. I only reached full employment four years later. A lot of kindness from friends/family during that time, and a lot of sleepless nights/identity crises. I'm afraid to go back to Los Angeles, still.

Shit remy <3

Lol timely. I’ve never had as tough a time emotionally as I am right now but that’s I recently realized that my mom checked out mentally and as a mom when I was about 18 and literally everything since that and her death a year ago was pretty horrific because of her. Coming to this realization and processing it is harder than the preceding disastrous 20 years.

(She was a raging alcoholic with narcissistic personality disorder and literally the most difficult and miserable person I’ve ever met.)

oh hi

also remy were you really off ilx five years!?

This might be it. Sorry for cryptic brevity but this thread appearing now seems apposite. I'm gonna get my shit together tho, it's a wholly self-made hole anyway.

The death of my mother (six months ago, yesterday) is only now starting to fuck me up. It's a creepy crawl but hits so hard. Man, it is so tough and so complex. It messes with every single aspect of life. I do not want it to, but it does.

E, feeling your comments, more than I wished. Best to you <3

Wait until your dad gets a new girlfriend who pretty much seems like the mom you wish you’d had!

(xpost to ross) Yeah! What's weird is that – even though that time was objectively awful – I remember it with a lot of nostalgia. I'm really very lucky to have had good relationships to lean on, and this place as a kind of mobile Kaffeeklatsch. Unfortunately, there are also some Very Cool People I met during that time that I now avoid (and/or) avoid me, because I was a sad-sack with depressed social skills.

(post to darragh) crazy, huh? I posted very sporadically (1-2 times/month if at all) for large chunks of 2009 - 2014

ENBB –– Another friend of mine is going your very same situation right now. She's got a parent slowly, inelegantly dying, and is realizing that (even though she hadn't entertained or desired the possibility of reunion) there's not even the off-chance of reconciliation with this parent. As she said, there's nothing like the certainty of death to drive home that point. It sounds like a horrid time, my thoughts go out to you.

If it wasn’t clear, I meant that sarcastically. This is some twilight zone level weird shit.

Oops x-post

Thank you, R.

I also leant heavily on this place - but by lurking, and reading the archives. If mods were worried about online activity showing some individual obsessively making it though years of threads for hours at a time - sorry, that was me.

Wait until your dad gets a new girlfriend who pretty much seems like the mom you wish you’d had!

― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Thursday, September 20, 2018 12:38 AM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

:'-/

rly disappointed that montage hasnt been a route out for anyone yet tbh

I get it E, no worries <3

What I don't get is why Deems is making all of us miserable with this thread.

Super love to remy

every day is a new worst time. i need help.

xp it was a passing comment by jim vancouver in another thread and the intent was as someone said itt- to ask in a format that hopefully bounded the period in a soecific experience or circumstance and to see if ppls experience of these things were episodic, or circular, immutable etc

nothing wrong with a wallow either but ive had a few bumps the past few years and a few highs and am much more aware now of the parton peak/trough truism, which has been a help in less ideal circumstances as i have more life experience to draw on.

locus of control or some shit idk

got that but hope u got that i got that

certain that the worst is yet to come, my life has been fine so far

good attitude flopson

lbi i feel so attacked rn

Brim pm me if you want buddy

Love to enbb

Dmac I think you’re trolling about attacks but I got love for you

ha poking lbi not trolling

srs low point was his pissing in my shower tbh

I had a terrible time in 2009 running up credit card debt after I lost a secondary but essential teaching gig, and it happened to coincide with weight gain, new president, and a failure to account for the depths of a long buried lust for a friend.

However, it's been a terrific few years, execrable political scene notwithstanding. Life sucks that way.

earlier this year when the washington capitals won the stanley cup

Cafeteria at work ran out of my favourite coffee beans

Doing better now by the grace of god

Sharted in a rental car once

like objectively my life is somewhat better than a few years ago, I have a job (if no benefits and a perpetual fear of when I will be fired from it) and a relationship that is fine at least currently. but there is still the crushing weight of personal and professional failure that there is no going back from. and every year it gets heavier. if my life were a sitcom it would have been canceled many seasons ago because it ran out of plot.

it's a wholly self-made hole anyway

none of us asked to be born into this species tbf

Aguirre sdtk is the best come at me bro

(j/k hugs all around , love you LL)

lol i don't fight, i just crank the vuh louder <3

Sweet Fischelscher jams just intensify my rage

*furiously plays air guitar*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL8E3Q5iZsY

probably right at the present moment wherein i attempt to change my life circumstances and in so doing create massive emotional collateral damage to those I love the most.

I'm sure you have no reason to doubt their commitment

anyway I'm sorry if I upset peopl

*people

Side question: I must be having a bad "too long since I kept up with ilxors moment" because katherine, I think I don't know who you are? I apologize if I'm forgetting something! I also don't read ilm ever so that might be it. Anyway, I've enjoyed your vibe of late so thank you for your posts.

this doesn't really seem to be the smartest time to advertise that, sorry

(not that it isn't semi-public but)

I feel like I just lurch from crisis to crisis: a stepdad battering my mother, a new stepdad battering me, bullied at school for being camp and academic, thrown out for being gay, taking custody of my brother in my late teens, doing a degree I shouldn't have and then not being able to find work in it or wanting to, having my house burgled, two redundancies, mugged at knifepoint, estrangement from my mother, manic episodes brought on by medication, probably other significant stuff too?

but the worst times weren't because of these specific causes, they were because I felt I had nobody to talk to about them - the burglary was awful but people came through with visits and gifts and Tangible Help, whereas the depression I fell into when I was 22 was awful because it let me push everyone away and I had nobody to talk to. Things are rarely great but my advice to anyone in the worst time in their life would be to find someone - a friend, a therapist, whoever - and let someone help you get through it.

Good advice, and take care boxedjoy.

sounds like you've been through the wringer, boxedjoy. fwiw all the best to you.

I mean in writing it all sounds awful but when I read through this thread I think there's people who've dealt with a lot lot worse. I've never had a major bereavement yet, thankfully.

the other thing about talking to people is that when they listen, they are actively choosing to be around you, they are doing you a kindness by offering their time and support and they're not obliged to, and just realising that is always a boost. I turned 30 a few months back and I invited people to come to our house for a small party, not everyone I hoped to see made it but all the ones who did, they chose to spend time and money and effort on that, and it's things like that that make a huge difference to me. I might start a companion thread (unless it exists and I missed it), "what was the best time in your life?"

heh that never occurred to me but would be a welcome antidote

What was the best time in your life and how did you get yourself out of it

inheritance

boxedjoy that is so, so relatable. When my suicidality became a real thing, and I reached out to friends about it, asking for help, I was constantly told to get "inpatient care" (not what I needed), or told "we all are suicidal, every day." I remember wishing, rather morbidly, that I had cancer instead of what I had, because a tangible, physical ailment would be easier for my friends to understand and provide me with the support I needed. But this is the worst part about mental health stuff. The very thing you need-- social support, friends to distract you-- is the very thing that we're conditioned to avoid.

yeah in retrospect I probably would have gotten out of my post-relationship / post-maybe-assault rut if I'd had anyone to talk to, but I didn't, so it took years to get the worst of it mostly behind me

Right now. My 7 month old boy has a rare disease that’s basically cancer. My 17 year relationship is struggling as a result. Life is basically hell, some days.

Great empathy your way, SM. That situation creates enormous emotional turmoil and grief, while forbidding you to collapse under its weight, because your child needs every scrap of strength and aid you can give. You suffer and have no chance to express it. Try not to despair. Everything changes and there is a further shore you'll all find together.

Our daughter had open heart surgery when she was 8 weeks old, and strange to say, the discovery of her malformed heart, the surgery and the recovery period (during which she received NO painkillers of any description!!) may not even qualify as the worst time of my life. That list is kind of top-heavy. :(

Two times, both career-related. 1) The first half of 1985--turned down for grad school, working at a job I hated. Starting to write for local music monthly turned me around. 2) Most of 1989. The magazine I was working for went bankrupt, went into a job at a television station I hated, got fired from that. Getting into teacher's college brought all that to a close.

sorry to hear about your situation SM, sending good vibes your way FWIW

I didn't even read the previous posts, sorry. Ditto.

Very sorry to hear, SM.

Katherine feel free to reach out to me if you want, or not, but best wishes

very sorry to hear that SM

In regards to the earlier question on how do you work your way out of a bad time in your life, 2010 - ended a 10 year relationship so i moved to a new city and started a job in a medical career for about 7 years. During that time I met my ex and dated for about 8 months and remained friends for 4 years but things became increasingly worse in my life again, for a variety of reasons. It is really hard to think of a cure all, but at this point in my life i want to re-imagine my life for the better after all the warning signs have occurred, and get on a path to peace and love

and i hope the best for you all