Cancer, death, hurricanes, financial ruin and leg hair.
Never mind. I just caught on that this thread is for the lowest one’s felt, not the lowest ones descended to.
Carry on.
Okay, I got on the bus after waiting at the bus stop (where it was really sunny). The bus driver started right up so I grabbed for the nearest pole.
Only it wasn’t a pole! It was a blind guy’s white cane!
So I said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I was blinded by the sun and it’s dark in here…” Oh my god. I just complained to a blind guy whose cane I’d grabbed about being blinded by the sun!
I was deeply embarrassed, so I laughed. Uncontrollably. Still standing at the front of a bus full of people.
Later that day, I was in a sporting goods store looking for tennis balls. I heard someone with a very interesting voice–gravelly but still kind of musical, and warm and sexy. I turned around to see who was attached to this voice and it was a woman with some sort of affliction. She had no neck, lots of scars. She looked hideous, and my face must have registered that even though I really did not mean for it to. It was a quick thing but she couldn’t have missed it as she was right behind me. She was with a young guy who might have been her son, who also saw my look and who patted her supportively.
Now I’m pretty sure that people who have undergone some kind of trauma that makes them hideous know it, and know that people will react to it. I still felt pretty bad about it. I also felt like maybe this was a day I should have just stayed home. At least that time I didn’t laugh in embarrassment, god knows why.
That made me genuinely laugh out loud.
My lowest moments have also been my best. In six months I got divorced, sold the house, sold all of the furniture and white goods, and accepted redundancy at work. The last day in my house I was sat on a small Ikea chair, watching tv and having a beer. There was nothing else in the house except a suitcase containing all of my worldly goods. I left the chair and gave the tv to my parents. I had no job, no wife, no furniture, no house, and no car.
It got better, although I still have (or own) no wife, no furniture, no house, and no car, 8 years later.
- I was without a job or any hope. Literally, on the last day I had agreed to pay rent or GTFO of my apartment, I got a job. I had a grand in cash stashed away for living homeless, so I paid rent with it.
It was bad before then. Suicide plans that I knew I wouldn’t be able to complete, but plans none the less. When you find yourself contemplating the cost of a bottle of vodka and a jug of anti-freeze versus a 12 gauge and a box of shells, shit’s bad.
Ex girl friend kicked me right in the nuts. Hit me like a ton of bricks. Man, I miss her …
Three years ago, aboard a full flight. I was sitting in my seat, arms crossed as tightly as they could, trying to take up as little space as I could. Came home and said to my husband, ‘I need to join Weight Watchers or something, because I can’t do this anymore.’
Thirty kilograms later, my life is very different.
Not leg hair. The feeling of humiliation. I’m not sure why that’s so hard to grasp.
This is another warning for you. Too many warnings in a short time may result in a suspension. I strongly suggest you knock it off and listen to mod warnings.
I might be at it right now.
Ah, alcoholism. New lows everyday! One of my more memorable lows happened on a standard Tuesday morning at work, at my desk. A passing coworker was able to correctly guess the exact type of alcohol I was drinking the night before, based on smell (rye whiskey was the winner). Once he saw how horrified I was by our exchange, he tried to pass it off as simply him having a sensitive nose, but the damage was done.
With sincere respect to Rachellelogram, wasn’t that sort of exchange common between tween kids in your neck of the woods?
My freezing to death drunk on Bailey’s Irish Cream suicide scenario was actually not in jest. During a period of transient depression, I spent many hours searching for a method that I would be able to execute and that would be the least upsetting to my family and whoever found my body. It was oddly comforting when I finally settled on a viable plan.
I am no longer depressed, but I know if life ever gets truly unbearable I have an exit strategy.
My second nervous breakdown that found me cowering under a desk in the dark, slashing at my wrist, planning on killing myself before I’d realized my husband had come home from work early that day. All that culminated in my last in-hospital psych stay, after a ride in a police car. Worst night of my life personally and only second to my husband almost dying from an allergic reaction while already in the hospital for hepatic encephalopathy.
The good thing though is… we’re both in much better places now.
Every single thing I ever did when I was truly in the depths of addiction. Probably the thefts of $1000’s worth of drugs and cash probably was my ultimate low. I am above that now, but that was definitely my low low point. There were several things I did under my manic phases of Bipolar that were real low points as well.
So many low points, not enough room to list them all 
Not to mention that, when **rachellelogram ** posted, the only other example was bargain-bin shoes.
And yes, both were actually about feeling less-than and embarrassed.
I had been laid off, and the severance had run out, and I was heading out to a job interview (maybe about the 10th, none of which had gotten me anywhere), and my wife and I were arguing about something, and on the way out the door she told me I was the laziest son of a bitch in the world.
A couple of months later I got a probationary-hire, part time, at a small software shop. Between my basic ineptitude, and being sick for part of it, I got let go before even finishing the probationary period.
It was a tough time.
Too many to list, too embarrassing to tell.
Here’s a couple:
- A 3 year period of unemployment where I applied to over 100 different companies, with virtually zero interviews.
- Broke my hand and I don’t remember how.
- Had a Ph.D. telling me his (wrong) information was 100% correct and I would be fired if I disagreed with him, even though his ideas would make around 50 people jobless and 200 others homeless.
- Didn’t have the courage to tell people to fuck off and be my own man.
- Regretted things that happened over 20 years ago instead of taking control of my life today.
Too many to list.
Just a whole teenage and early adulthood era of bad choices with parents who were very naive, had their head in the sand or were too engrossed in their own stuff to notice or care.
I’m surprised I actually survived. Scoring drugs in dangerous inner city neighborhoods where I stuck out like a sore thumb.
Losing too much weight where I’d notice friends looks of shock they’d try to cover when they hadn’t seen me in awhile. Yet kept quiet.
Black eyes, broken nose, missed appointments, my 3 year old niece becoming scared of me.
The sound of birds chirping madly outside in the minutes before dawn always reminds me of all night binges. Running out of my supply, coming down, withdrawals and depression.
Once I was clean and told my mom years later about the drug life I used to lead, she acted completely shocked. She had no idea. I don’t believe her. I just think she chose to look the other way.
My son is only 4, but I know the signs and will watch him like a hawk to try to steer him in the right direction.
When my firstborn son died. No other loss comes closing to losing your kid, and it sent me into a spiral of self-destructive, dangerous, cruel-to-others behavior that I am ashamed even to think of.
Over two decades ago in the former Yugoslavia I was gathering some firewood and smelt something really horrendous. I thought it was a dead animal and started looking around in the area, so to avoid stepping into or tripping over whatever it was. I found a decaying human arm. A little further away was the rest of the body and a few more in a shallow trench.