I had to leave college halfway through the semester due to bipolar depression. I’d put so much work into my classes and friendships that I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t really have a choice, though.
After that, agreeing to electroshock therapy was no big deal (luckily medication worked before that had to happen).
Emotionally: Last March, watching my wonderful, loving, funny, generous mother die of a mysterious and horrifying disease. I’m going through a divorce right now, and I’d rather get a thousand divorces than go through that again.
Mentally: Taking the Tennessee bar exam last summer. (I passed.)
Physically: I had to think about this one for a while before I remembered this incident. It was summer 1991, and I was helping my college roommate’s family move. I was 19. His mom and stepdad had a HUGE wooden armoire, the kind on which the front opens up so it’s almost like an extra unfolded room. It had to weigh 600-700 pounds.
We had to get it up the stairs to the master bedroom. My friend and I were doing all the heavy lifting, because his stepfather had some terrible back injury and his mom was a little tiny thing. And somehow, in the process of getting this monster into the house and maneuvered onto the stairs, we all got turned around so that my friend (6’6", 275 lbs) was above it on the stairs, and I (5’10", 145 lbs) was below it.
So my skinny ass started pushing. Thankfully, the armoire was strapped to a dolly, but it still felt like pushing a Buick up a flight of stairs. Getting it up each individual step took four or five tries. The whole flight of stairs probably took us 30 minutes, and there were at least two times when my friend lost his grip for a moment and the whole weight was on my back. Both times I somehow held it there, my strength amplified by animal panic: I knew that my choices were to hold this fucking brute in place by myself, or to be crushed to death by it.
We finally got it up the stairs. Once it was safely up there, we both collapsed. I lay on the floor gasping, nearly crying, unable to talk, and his stepfather brought me a glass of water and said, very seriously, “I really feared that thing was going to kill you. Good job.”
At the end of the day, he paid me double his original offer.
Wow, like a few others, I’m realising how intensely lucky I am, even relative to other people in the Western world.
My parents are still alive. Three of my grandparents died when I was too young to understand and the third is still kicking. Worst breakup I’ve ever had left me crying for a couple of days.
That said, I can think of three incidents in my life, the memory of which makes me cry, still. First is the funeral of a… somewhat friend (my brother’s girlfriend’s brother) at which I was a pallbearer. If you search out my threads, I asked a few questions on the Dope about Latin and the funeral program. The other two are putting down two of my cats, both of whom were essentially in my life from the get-go. One was still purring and sucking my ear (he loved to do that) as I sat on the stairs before leaving to the vet.
Reporting my college roommate’s sexual assault.
Oddly enough, I didn’t have a hard time starting the ball rolling. Knocking on the door, stating that something bad had happened, explaining what it was…that was the easy part. Courage came into it over the next hour. (Well, it felt like an hour. It was a bloody long time, anyway.) Much of that hour was spent being basically interrogated. Was I sure it happened? Was I sure it happened like that? Was I sure those people were involved? If they talked to her, would she have the same story?
They really didn’t want to believe it, and there was a definite sense of wanting me to just drop it, admit that I was blowing something out of proportion. Add to that the fact that I hadn’t cleared this with my roommate, who did want to forget it had happened, and I was shaking almost as badly as I am right now just recounting it. But I was not going to back down. I didn’t want her to do what I was aware that college rape victims usually did: stay in bed for a week and then drop out of school. And when they worked their way around to the story of the last young woman to lodge such a grievance (they said she was delusional. What I’d heard was that it damn well did happen, and she was coerced into a retraction), my mind was fully made up. So they finally gave in and took her to the hospital and the local police. And AFAIK, she stayed in school. Though nothing happened to the perps.
Hardest thing physically: Maybe this will warm me up. Last summer, walking home with heat exhaustion. Didn’t see it coming. Yes, it was 100 degrees, but I wore a hat! I brought water! Though obviously not enough. Spent half an hour in a public restroom, then staggered home, stopping to rest every few feet. I’ve been in better shape when drunk; I’ve been in better shape with the flu. I was just close enough to home that taking the bus or a cab wouldn’t have helped, and I couldn’t get hold of anyone who could drive me. It’s one of those things where all you can say is, “I don’t know how I made it.”
Emotionally: Telling my parents I’d flunked out of college after my third semester. They put a huge value on education, were paying my tuition, and I’d screwed up in a monumental fashion.
Physically: The summer of 2003, Kentucky. Mid-July to mid-August. I was in a volunteer program working with the national park service. A crew of eight of us spent eight hours a day, six days a week, restoring a hiking trail to usability. Every day we’d drive to the trailhead from our frontcountry camp, haul our five-gallon water jugs anywhere from one to three miles in, and get to work with our hand tools in the 90-degree heat.
One day I was tasked with digging out two little ‘gutters’ across the trail. Then you lay logs in them, and over time, water running down the trail is diverted off the trail, leaving sediment behind. It helps prevent erosion and maintains good drainage.
As it turned out, the area was rocky. By rocky I mean that, underneath about an inch and a half of dirt was solid rock. A gigantic boulder. So, I had to dig the channel through solid rock. About three feet long, about four inches deep.
Did I mention that I was sixteen years old and weighed about ninety pounds, soaking wet and in my hiking boots? For someone my size I’ve always been fairly muscular, but most people my size are in fifth grade.
That didn’t matter, because it needed to be done. So I picked up my trusty pickaxe, strapped on my safety goggles, and got to work on the rock. When my hand started to go numb from the vibration down the handle, I’d stop, take a break and drink another thirty ounces or so of water, then get back to work.
It took me all day, about seven and a half hours, but I finished it. Every single muscle in my body hated me afterwards, but it was the most satisfying pain I’ve ever felt.
There have been a couple and I can’t say which is harder.
First (chronologically) was the death of our neighbors/close friends’ daughter in a house fire. Her parents were at the funeral home a couple of hours away for the visitation of a mutual friend of ours. We were supposed to be there but hadn’t left yet when a car came right up into our yard and a woman jumped out. She told us that the house was on fire and that the daughter had called her. We immediately went down there - about 1/4 mile away - and could get no response. My husband kicked in the back door but was forced out by heavy smoke; we weren’t able to get the front door open at all, so we used a tricycle to break a picture window. Eventually she was found by the front door. We found out later that it was hard to open and only her dad could open it.
I remember how cold it was that night, and how quiet as we waited for the fire department to arrive. And later, standing with her grandmother who lived nearby as she kept saying “God wouldn’t take her so young”. And later, at my house (the roads were blocked and they couldn’t get to where our friends were staying) having her mom’s family - grandma, grandpa, aunts and uncles - in shock and tears. We were up all night and there was nothing I could do. It was the most horrible thing I think that any of us who were there have experienced.
The other hard thing was sitting with my mom the night she was dying. Not that I would have been anywhere else; I felt very protective of her but I was sort of inwardly shocked that I wasn’t screaming and begging her to stay. But I still don’t know how I managed to let her go.
Sticking with a lawsuit which hurt a lot of people’s personal and professional pride. It took six years. The first four involved reliving personal events over and over with people who would provide an independent professional opinion (for a fee, of course). Said people would then variously forget or refuse to write a report - it took eighteen months alone to get the initial report which said, “yes, plaintiff has a compensable injury” which allowed me to proceed. I even had to see a shrink who would provide an “independent” professional opinion for the defendent. He worked for the defendent, WTF? The absolute worst part was the last two years when all the necessary reports had been made and my lawyers had made a formal approach to their lawyers with a request for a $ amount and their lawyers didn’t respond. Not to phone calls, letters or faxes. For two years. They finally agreed to a settlement conference…and walked out after half an hour. More unreturned phone calls, letters and faxes for another two months. In the meantime, the emotional stress could have killed me.
I won (although of course, I had to sign a piece of paper saying that they accept no liability). They settled. And I would do it all again because it was the right and just thing to do.
Several Emotional: Dad calling me up when I was 30 and telling me that my brother had been killed in a plane crash and then hearing him breakdown and cry on the phone–something I never thought I’d ever hear. Having the pets put down (too numerous to count–still wrenching every time). Watching my brother-in-law die after botched medical care destroyed the rest of his liver (the wife refused to sue). Having the wife tell me about a cancer diagnosis which was pretty grim at the time (she’s fine now, but with got one more year to wait before she’s considered free).
Mental: Just getting through Engineering school; e’nuf said.
Physical: Walking 400 miles through New Mexico starting at the US/Mexico border over a six week period. Avoiding lighting strikes, rattlesnakes, crazy teenage drivers, Brahma bulls with an attitude, and always, always being hungry no matter how much you eat.
A month after I organised my Mum’s funeral (and gave the eulogy), my Dad died.
Then I had to do all it over again.
I remembered another one…in college, I was working two part time jobs, essentially working seven days a week, and going to school full time. How the hell I did it I don’t know…I think it was one of those things that you get yourself into and don’t realize how nuts it is until you’re done. I maintained dean’s list/President’s list grades and made enough to live off campus and graduated a semester early.
If someone told me today I had to do this I’d laugh in their face. But I was young, too naive to know better, and except for getting burned out here and there I made it.
I quit smoking
I quit taking narcotics
six of one, half dozen of the other
Being a Peace Corps Volunteer. My experience in Bulgaria is pretty different from even sven’s in Cameroon, but a lot of what she says rings true for me. I live in a rural village (it’s officially a “city”, but the population is 3,000; I feel okay calling it a village) where I’m the only person around who speaks English and my first year was just incredibly lonely. If it wasn’t for my cat, who’s pretty good company, I don’t know what I would have done. (He went missing for two weeks and I practically fell apart. I remember sitting alone in my bedroom, absolutely bawling in a way that I hadn’t since I was a little kid.) Teaching anywhere is tough, but teaching in a broken school system where the materials are completely inadequate, where the students often don’t have the textbooks, where discipline is completely lacking (thanks to democracy, say my colleagues; ah, to go back to the paradise that was communism!)…ugh, I’m not even going to continue this sentence. This last winter was just a killer. It’s not nearly as cold in the winter here as what I’m used to from living in Chicago, but because insulation and modern heating are unknown here, it’s always cold in the winter. You can’t get away from it. It’s just fucking miserable. My pipes froze and I didn’t have running water for three weeks in January. To get water I had to go out to the town spring (and on streets covered with layers of ice, because they don’t use salt) and haul it in back in water bottles.
All that said, this has been a really amazing, great experience, and I’m grateful to have had this opportunity. Peace Corps changed its slogan awhile ago, but I really think that its old slogan - “the toughest job you’ll ever love” - pretty much says it all.
I’m one of the folks to whom the hardest thing they’ve had to do to something/someone was to have a beloved pet put down.
Physically the hardest thing was the work our cafe had to do to prepare for a major reception at our library. It was for 550 people and the First Lady, Laura Bush, would be there, so it had to be good. The day before, and the day of the event I worked 32 hours, plus much more prep time before that. And after the opening we were run off of our feet for days as folks crowded into the place to check us out.