You think you have it bad? My dog just died, my car broke down, my wife left me for another man, she stole the money from my bank accounts, I was struck by lightning, my house was robbed, stubbed my toe, lost my job, my oil tank is empty, someone drank my last beer, I have pink-eye, just found a hair in my food, just found food in my hair, ran out of clean socks, got a papercut, I have a giant zit on my face, I got my masters in PolySci, got caught masturbating, and I just crapped my pants.
Again, in an effort to speak truth to you let me ask a question. If you say to others that “my life sucks” do you want them to agree with you or do you want them to tell you that “no it doesn’t” and try to help you dig yourself from out of your despair?
Let’s not forget that out of 37 Christmases one of them has to be the worst. So if the worst thing to happen in all those years was a stubbed toe, by definition that would be the worst one. Though maybe it would have made for a better OP
Gotta go, Mass is starting. Latin so I’m going to be awhile.
Dopers really are annoying, aren’t they? Who in the hell made the rule that nothing is bad as long as something is worse? So then maybe nothing is good as long as there’s something better. If there’s always someone worse off and always someone better off where the hell does that leave me, some half-assed state of purgatory/nonbeing?
Bah, the OP knows what they are doing and certainly doesn’t need YOUR help. Stop trying to be significant. Can’t we just agree that Ketchup soup is bad? No, we can’t even agree that stupid bumper sticker is stupid. It is with the utmost confidence that I’m not ruining the OP’s life that I say there there.
Also, life does indeed suck. Hard. Balls. Though that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be funny, OP.
Also, we have indeed had a superabundance of woe-is-me threads. Luckily they are easy for the big Lebowskis of the Dope, who went out and achieved anyway, to avoid. Does the title convey woe? Avoid. Is the Author Mookie Blaylock? Avoid.
Truly, regardless what any of the other may think of me I wish you well. I hope you will be strong and face all of life’s challenges with dignity and composure.
Recently, I offered advice to someone in a Pit thread. Well, it was less advice & more “here’s how you fix your life from the guy whose not there”. I went back, re-read what I wrote, and I realized that I was wrong. I fessed up to it & left the discussion.
I only bring that up because sometimes, to man up, you need to be the first to admit your wrong when you’re wrong.
In this case, I’m not sure what’s up with the OP. Is he just looking to vent? A good scream when you’re in pain…been there, done that, never went to jail for it. No worries.
Is he looking for $/food by PM? That’s not happening.
Is he looking for how to get food, how to stay warm, because he’s in this situation for the first time & is doing this the braille method? Wisconsin people will know that state better than me in terms of available organizations/charities. I’ve got to assume he has some access to shelter /cooking facilities.
I’m going to wish him well.
I don’t think he’s at the point of spearing trash-can raccoons with a boyscout knife for meat, but hunger will do strange things. I think the rule of thumb hunters use for deer is, cut the jugular & bleed it out first, gut out/cut out the soft organs second, skin it third,
hack the parts with meat away from the body fourth and cook the ever-living sh-t out of it fifth.
If you’re at the point where you can’t feed yourself (or your child, if she were here), isn’t buying presents a bad idea? Or at any rate, buying presents that are that expensive? I’d think that being able to provide food for your child/self is a big part of being a good parent.
Actually, dumpster diving and urban trapping isn’t that big deal, but that isn’t what the OP was talking about. If it were, I have real world, practical advice I could offer. Rather the OP is still in the meta-physical, moreso meta-psychological stage of stage of survival skills.
Again, Duffer, do you want to grow past this stage or not?
Duffer, I’ve decided that I am done with this thread. Follow the advice offer or peruse the path offered howsoever you choose. I can’t change your mind nor can I even offer real evidence indicating a path you might opt to choose. All I can show are my opinions, but in truth they are only worth what you’ve been required to pay to know.
Jesus Mr Owl, have you never had a lonely, shitty Christmas? The OP is entitled to feel lonely and crappy. I enjoy reasonably good health, I have lots of friends and a loving spouse but I still had a terribly lonely Christmas last year due to a death and unemployment. Sometimes you just feel crappy and want some commiseration. As stated earlier, Christmas just can really bring out the lonely when things are looking bleak.
I hope tomorrow finds you feeling a bit better and the next day a bit better still. Merry Christmas, despite the circumstance.
Well, I hope things start going better for you. Sometimes you have to reach a rock bottom to figure out how to start climbing up again. If you really, truly, only have a few packs of ramen, how would you possibly take care of your kid, anyway? This might be a good time to think about what you need to do to get to a point where you can take care of both yourself and your child. You need a plan to get out of this.
It sounds like you went through some tough times. Unfortunately, blaming your ex is only going to go so far. Guilty or not, you’ve got the deck of cards you got. You can’t waste your energy assigning resentment and blame when you’ve got so much to do. You can’t chose how she acts, but you can choose how you react to it. And I promise you, resentment is the one emotion that never brought anything good into anyone’s life. It’s a waste of energy. Write her off. Hard as it is, you are going to have to move on.
Volunteering at a soup kitchen seems like a good start- no reason to spend the holiday alone and hungry. Mass sounds good, too, but try to connect to some people while you are there. Don’t use it as just a novel venue to think about how shitty your life is.
For the records, my worse Christmas was when I had malaria, mysteriously turned blue, and dropped Christmas dinner for five in the dirt…and scraped it up and ate it anyway. Good times!
Hey I know how it goes. My wife left me six months ago and took the kids. She meet some guy a few months back and lied about it even though my kids were talking about it.
With all of her talk of ‘family’ being the most important thing, she decided I could take the kids for Christmas Eve and morning while she went with her new guy. I jumped at taking the kids for our first Christmas apart.
I fully expected not to get any presents from my kids. I did though, a CD of copied music the girls like. Two pictures of the girls, one of which I had given her. And a Dilbert calendar. She put less then zero thought into it, but she was always that way.
Anyway my point is it does get better. After weeks of going back and forth I feel much better. The presents helped as I had the children help pick out her stuff and know I was being the better person.
It will get better dude. Even though not having the kids sucks, be the better person and the kids will come around. But I know it will get better. Find some music, take a walk, do something in the mean time. That’s what I’ve been doing and it helps.
Duffer, I’m sorry. When you have a child and family, it’s more than hard to be alone on Christmas. It injures your soul.
Know that you are cared for, even loved. Why, as something of an abstract concept - another poster on an Internet message board - I love you. Because you matter. Because no person is an island. Because by loving you, maybe I make your world a little better, and in turn, you can some day make someone else’s world a little better.
It will get better. Honest. Maybe not specifically on December 25th, but in general. Try to concentrate on the things that are good - your child is healthy and happy, so are the other members of your family, the zombie apocalypse is off for yet another year, and so on . . .
And if you’re still feeling down, the best suggestion I have for you is to do something for someone else. Go to anysoldier.com, pick someone, and write them a letter. Ask those drop-in places if they need some volunteer help. Call your church and see if anyone needs to be driven any place (if you have a car) or helped on public transportation. Go for a walk, and give each person you see a genuine smile and wish them a Merry Christmas.
I know you said you’d be acting differently if you had a child with you but shouldn’t a reliable/consistent parent always have those things? I mean, if your ex had some kind of accident and you had to step up and take care of her this weekend, your child would have nothing to eat? Plus, taking care of yourself so you can be a good parent to your kid is important, too. The fact that you were too busy trying to get DVDs and video games to buy food and that you think it’s more important to have a gift for your daughter than food available in your house makes me think that you’re not really that serious about being there for your child. I second what even sven said. This could be the wake up call you need to turn your parenting around.
Freudian Slit, this is one of the symptoms of depression. It becomes more and more difficult to take care of oneself. One of the best ways out of it is to be responsible for the care of another being - anything from a houseplant to a pet to a child. But, it’s something of a Catch-22. If you’re so depressed you’re not taking good care of yourself, who is going to trust you with a child. If you don’t have the extra imperative of a child to take care of because no one trusts you, why bother taking care of yourself?
Depression is an insidious disease. It’s symptoms tend to manifest themselves in such ways that they destroy sympathy in others. I’ve read that depression mimics what’s known as sickness behavior - that when people get sick, they tend to withdraw physically, staying in bed, sleeping, having very low energy. And other people, seeing that behavior, tend to steer clear of the person exhibiting it. Sickness behavior is great if you’ve got an acute viral illness; it prevents you from infecting others. But when it’s a chronic, non-infectious condition . . . it becomes destructive. Successful treatment requires a very sympathetic, helpful social support network. These days, that sort of thing is a luxury for many.
