2011 - my annus horribilis

[codgerone]

So this year* has been pretty crappy and I'd nominate it for my Annus Horribilis.

A good friend and mentor died in October.

Split from long term partner also in October.

Found out today that a long term high risk/high reward investment that I put a substantial amount of money into a few years ago has just gone tits up.

2011 - you suck.

What's your worst year?

*Up til October I was cruising along fairly well!

[Llama Llogophile]

OK, I read the title wrong.

I thought this was going to be about your... well... butt.

[Anaamika]

OK, I read the title wrong.

I thought this was going to be about your... well... butt.

Me, too.

[Greg Charles]

You both came in here hoping to see someone's horrible butt? I find that ... disturbing.

If it's any comfort codgerone, maybe the world will end in 2012 and you will have proven the adage, "Life's a bitch and then you die." There won't be anyone around to prove it to, but at least it will help get your mind off your horrible butt.

[thelabdude]

Yeah, I can dig up some other negatives for this year, but having our visit to Pittsburgh starting Labor Day weekend turn into a 4 day stay at the Pitt Med Center to have cancer tumors removed certainly makes some other years look better.

[Soylent Juicy]

I'm sorry to hear about your craptacular 2011. Mine was 2008:

May - my best friend's dog (part of my family) died.

July - my cat, who felt like my soulmate, that I had for 17 years - got her when I was 17 so I had her for literally half my life - died.

August - my leopard gecko that I had for 13 years died.

October - MY dog died. Congestive heart failure.

November - my best friend herself died. She woke up one morning with a brutal headache, drove herself to the hospital, long story short she had "small cell sarcoma" (brain & lung cancer) and was gone two weeks later.

The only good things to come out of 2008 were my boyfriend (now husband) and my cat (who was born two months after my other cat passed.)

Yeah 2008 sucked.

[RealityChuck]

1981.

I was on unemployment the entire year. Worse, my wife left me, something I could never come to terms with until a few months ago. She kicked me out of our house; I spent most of the year living with her grandmother (they thought she was nuts). The place had fleas! (Due to a tenant who owned a dog, then moved out. I would go to my room in shorts and see me legs covered with the bugs.)

My grandfather also died.

There were some good things. I sold my first story, began my novel, and, after things fell apart, I met the woman I later married.

[Fear Itself]

2011 is the worst year ever.

My wife died in May.

Tomorrow is our anniversary.

Happy Thanksgiving.

[gwendee]

2011 may well be my worst, to date.

I typed it all out, but it just seemed like self-serving whining.

Pale in comparison to what others have endured.

[Gleena]

2001 for lots of reasons I don't really want to list, since the worst of them involved my son. It was awful.

[CairoCarol]

Late 2007 - late 2008
Father died.
Mother took steroids that turned her into, well, Insane Bitch On Steroids (with me as the only available target for her lunatic anger).
Bizarro world school administrator insisted our kid had PDD (he does not!), which had significant negative repercussions for his educational opportunities for about 2 years.
Evil insurance company wouldn't pay my dad's medical bills or even keep track of the fact that he had died, necessitating hours of frustrating phone calls, month after month.

I turned 50 that year but it was a joyless birthday celebration as I was too depressed to even want a party.

The good news is that it CAN get better. Although I'm still dealing with some of the aftermath of that terrible year, as a general matter life is much improved - I am far happier, and no longer suffering IBS, which very clearly was stress-related.

Here's hoping that each of you who had a horrible 2011 have a much better 2012, and are downright contented by 2013.

[freckafree]

Mine was 1998.

January - Mom diagnosed with lung cancer.
February - "Asked to resign" from a job I'd held for 13 years by the slimeball new guy
March - Started with a new babysitter that my 2 y-o son HATED. It ripped my guts out to leave him there every day.
April - Found a new job that I realized in short order that I hated. Very high stress environment. (At least I found a new babysitter.)
May - Babysitter my son hated reports us to CPS for child neglect, possibly in retaliation for leaving. Spent the rest of the summer dealing with CPS.
August - Mom falls and breaks a hip.
Mid-October - My brother calls me to tell me his son, a paramedic, has been killed in the line of duty. My high-stress employer docks my pay when I take a day off to drive four hours (and back) to attend the funeral.
End of October - Mom dies. I called her that morning to ask her if she wanted me to come visit, she said yes, and by the time I got there a couple of hours later, she was dead.
Thanksgiving and Christmas were both pretty miserable that year. I hadn't earned any vacation time and couldn't afford to get docked again, and it was the first of these holidays without my mom.

Totally sucky year. But I survived.

[elfkin477]

For me it was 1995

January - after my great-grandmother's very obvious addlement at Christmas, my parents and my grandfather (who had been diagnosed with cancer two months earlier) discuss "what do with Grammy" and decide that the best course of action is for my family to move in with her. This leads to a huge fight and me standing up to my parents for probably the first time ever given that I didn't want to change schools senior year. They reluctantly agreed to let me stay in the house to finish the school year.

March - Mom and Vynce move in with great-Grammy. Over 100 miles away. Since I was still 17 my dad "lived" with me still, but really spent 5 days a week with them. Things go badly for Mom and Vynce since great-Grammy really didn't want them there. Then, in late March, a huge pine tree with a double trunk breaks during a windstorm, and one half impales the house. It was fun for my parents to try to deal with that from a hundred miles away. For some reason, my parents prove again that they are insanely trusting of my only-having-had-a-license-for-a-year self and have me drive back and forth between our house and great-grammy's every weekend, alone.

Spring - I turn 18. I was accepted to two different colleges, one in NH, the other in Boston. I was going to go to the one in Boston. Then the idea of being in MA 100% of the time causes me to have a mini-freakout, and my poor mother drives with me all the way to the university so I can put in my deposit check at the very last minute. Right around then my parents worry a lot that my brother isn't coping well with the move and our great-grandmother's condition (this coming after she broke a plate over Mom's head), so I end up taking him home with me for spring break. It's probably the best week, other than prom, that whole spring.

June - I graduate high school and move the following day. I cried for three.

September - It very quickly becomes clear that rooming with one of my friends, who I'd known since 5th grade, was a seriously bad idea; we are soon hardly able to stand each other. I get a job for the first time ever. Then I add another. Two of my classes were really hard (ironically, two of the hardest classes I ever took in college!)...but going "home" for the weekend sucks too because great-Grammy has become rather vicious towards everyone. Now I know dementia can be like that, but I didn't then. Everywhere I was, it was miserable.

November - two days before Thanksgiving, I walked home from one of my jobs to find my dad walking up to my dorm. That was wrong, given I was supposed to take the bus(es) home. My grandfather died earlier that day. He was the only grandparent I had much of any contact with after the age of seven, so I was devastated. Vynce and our cousin, a year younger than Vynce, were too for pretty much the same reasons given Joey's other grandparents were already gone too.

Somewhere in there at the end of the year my beloved ferret Bandit caught great-grammy's flu and died too, but since that pales in comparison to losing my grandfather.

I figure that I'm not destined to ever take up the family hobby - alcoholism - because if that year couldn't drive me to drown my sorrows, now will.

[BangTheDrum]

2010 by far. I hope to never live through another year where some many just..bad things happen.

No work for my husband for the vast majority of the year so that meant cutting everything down to bare bones, selling off a lot of my belongings for grocery/mortgage money and having to part with three of my horses that I loved as much as most people love their kids.

The selling off of my belongings at this nasty little local dirty flea market where the flea market boss treated us like crap because we accidently placed our items for sale over some invisible line that only he could see. Really, this was one of the final blows to my self esteem and has really stuck with me. What a gigantic asshole he was.

Putting my house up for sale--the house that I said I would die in--I finally found where I wanted to stay for the rest of my life I loved it so much. Fixing everything up to sell it to someone else to love and enjoy. It was either sell it or lose all of the sweat equity we put in over the past 10 years if it ended up going into foreclosure if we couldn't keep up the payments. But, I always paid my bills first even if it meant no groceries.

Working for a small start up business that I thought would finally hit it big and turn me into something (and I was in on the ground floor) and watching it crash and burn because the two other parties involved couldn't get along with each other and abandoned the whole thing.

April, the loss of a friends horse (I had to hold him while the vet put him down) that I loved as much as one of my own

The death of a beloved dog that we had for 17 years

My mother having a life changing and totally debilitating stroke and the life adjustments that come with that

Coming to the realization that the vast majority of those folks that I considered friends abandoned me once I got "poor" and that they didn't really like me but were just using me for whatever they could get. I had nobody for support when the shit hit the fan for me while I had supported every one else in my life through all of their bad times. Really left me bitter but I am getting over it now.

Going to work at a miserable crappy vet hospital where I spent the majority of my days cleaning up shit, piss, vomit and blood for little to no pay after paying $4.00/gallon for gas to commute to the bastard place 7 days a week for an 80 mile round trip since it was the only job I could find. Then having them cheat me out of pay and benefits. Oh, and put up with the veterinarians treating me like shit on the bottom of their shoe because I was just a stupid vet assistant in their eyes. (fyi, I don't think vet assistants are stupid--it is an honorable profession that requires a lot of skill, dedication and hard work--it was just this particular vet clinic that the vets had that attitude toward the assistants) Made my existence and self esteem even better. Arghhh!!

My husband's mother died and we had no money to travel home to say goodbye and we both finally had paying work that particular month so we didn't go

I know there were more other horrible things but I am trying to block that whole year out of my consciousness. I still cry over my horses but I just change my thoughts very quickly if they pop into my head.

So, yeah, 2010...bite me.

[BangTheDrum]

Oh yeah--Gosh is this thread cathartic--2010 was also my 25th wedding anniversary year which my parents didn't even realize (they have never really cared about me that much but, dayum, I think 25 years is pretty notable and should make them proud--this was pre-stroke mom btw) and that my husband and I both spent working and worrying about losing our asses instead of celebrating.

I always thought that on our 25th anniversary we would take a nice vacation (we haven't had a vacation since 1987 btw) maybe even a cruise or some real get-a-way like our honeymoon. Instead it was about 115 degrees that day in June and I spent it cleaning horse stalls and my husband was nailing shingles on a roof somewhere. We will never have another 25th anniversary and we didn't even get to celebrate.

Such suckage.

[IvoryTowerDenizen]

2011 is the worst year ever.

My wife died in May.

Tomorrow is our anniversary.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Hugs to you, today.

I'm so sorry for your loss. :(

[AK84]

2011 has been awful for me as well

New Years Eve, my grandmother fell and two vertabe got fused.

More and more depressed at work, leading to eventual resignation.

Diagnosed with GERD.

Mother develops diabetes.


grandmother, the light of my life died in May

Develop anxiety, and suffer Panic Attacks and am currently fearful of suffering a heart attack (I am all of 27).

Sister has very bad cramps due to menses, blood pressure drops precipitously, she us ok.

I suffer from bad insomnia in August (thank god over now).

My other grandmother and my only surviving grandparent suffers from assorted medical problems.


I get a recurrence of Urticaria after 5 years, just this last week.

Generally, gone from being confident and happy go lucky to brooding and stressed out..


Here's to hoping that it does get better.

[Ellen Cherry]

Moved to MPSIMS, from IMHO. Wishing everyone better years to come!

[El_Kabong]

Either I've not had a really horrible single year, or I'm in denial, but I guess I'll nominate 2001 (the year my father passed away, after a long, difficult illness), or 2008 (mom, similar situation). Both events featured bonus family-disrupting meltdowns by a bipolar younger brother.

I was a fairly unhappy person my sophomore and junior years of high school, but that was a mighty long time ago.

[Brynda]

2009. If I ever have a worse year, it will kill me.

New Year's Day: my beloved husband was diagnosed with cancer.

March 14: My sweetheart died.

Rest of year: a crappy blur

I needed a new car and I wouldn't buy one until the 2010s came out. I didn't want to have to even have a car with 2009 attached to it.

[Ponch8]

I don't have any particular year in mind except maybe 1987, when I was in a school bus crash and got head lice in the same month.

2011 has been a very good year, even if for no other reason than my seeing Kesha in concert.

[StusBlues]

My worst year was probably 2005, going into 2006. I left a good situation to try to salvage a marriage and moved three states away. Took a massive pay cut, went into a position with no friends and the worst climate in the lower forty-eight. Within six months, I was divorced, utterly broke, and nearly homeless.

No one died, though, so I count this as a mild case compared to most of you.

[salinqmind]

I'm so sorry for all of your horrible years. :(

My most horrible year is yet to be, but I've been seeing coming attractions of the future
for the last 6 months. Not psychic, but all signs regarding some situations . point nowhere but down. I'm preparing for the worst and am getting a head start by waking up every morning with extreme anxiety attacks. Way to drag out the misery, stupid brain!

[orderfire]

2010-2011 have been really...interesting for me.
January '10 - my dad's best friend dies of ALS
February '10 - my boyfriend's best friend dies during heart surgery. Left behind a business, wife, three adult children and a seven year old boy.
My dad falls on the ice and cracks three ribs, spends a month in rehab. This is the wake up call that he probably can't go on living alone anymore.
May '10 - my mom's partner of 34 years dies after a long struggle with pulmonary fibrosis.
June '10 - wife of dad's best friend dies
July '10 - receive the news that my middle brother has been diagnosed with stage 3 esophageal cancer. Outlook is maybe 2-5 years.
Same moth, receive the news that one of my dearest girlfriends has been diagnosed with colorectal cancer.
August - finally arrange a full time care attendant to live with my dad.
October - take a trip to CA to see my brother and dear girlfriend who are both in the middle of their cancer treatments. Phone rings: it's big brother calling to tell me that mom is dead.

At this point all I can think is "REALLY, LIFE?? That's how it's going to be?".

Meanwhile, at work, this douchetank receptionist is complaining to my boss that I "take too much time off". Yeah, I'm just swanning about the globe, eating bon bons. Thankfully, she also retires.

Go back home, deal with mom's estate which is intricate and complicated.
Endure ridiculous snowstorm winter and spend lots of $$ to keep moms house in decent shape to sell it. Spend a shit ton of time advertising, interviewing and hiring replacement for douchetank.
Good news: she's awesome!

2011:
May: Fly to CA to visit cancer brother as he recovers from another surgery. Receive news that close neighbor and friend of eldest brother has dropped dead.

Cancer brother makes a long trip home to see 89 year old dad for the last time in July. The visit was great, wonderful, fun. No sooner does Cancer Brother return home, he discovers the cancer has metastasized throughout his entire digestive system. He has about 2 weeks and can't take any sort of sustenece again. He dies 13 days later.

I am grateful for many things throughout this time, not least the honor of being with my brother at his death, which was peaceful and painless. Still, holy shit, it's been a hell of a couple of years. Sure puts the good things into perspective.

[Chimera]

October 2003 to October 2004, my entire marriage and the initial part of the divorce process, which didn't actually end until April 2005.

[Rushgeekgirl]

This has been my worst year since 1995, when my mom died and my marriage ended, lost my home and my car was repossessed. I lost most of my belongings when I couldn't afford to pay the storage fee. I was homeless for couple months with a child. It wasn't a good year.

This one is almost as bad. Worse is not knowing what my future holds, but knowing how grim it looks unless I find a job very soon.

[Khadaji]

While this year was not stellar, I have to say that 2003 was probably my worst year.

A botched surgery on my stomach, setting me on a very long and painful road that lasted years (and from which I still have fallout), and the death of my father all within half a year.

[not what you'd expect]

1984 would rank up there in my list of worst years, I guess.

My husband of 6 months was killed in a car accident, which triggered the first of way too many panic attacks. I got down to 92 pounds and was being threatened with a feeding tube.

My mom died in 2006. I'm grateful I had her for 50 years. I've not gotten over her loss yet, though. I don't sit around and mourn her all the time, but nothing is ever quite as good as it used to be with her gone. She was the glue that held our family together. Holidays are not as much fun, that's for sure.

This is a sad thread. :(