What was the worst time in your life, and how did you climb out of it?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Just as in the thread title: at what point in your life did you hit ‘rock bottom’, and how did you climb out of it?

Since I’m a mere twenty-something (and barely that), I simply haven’t lived long enough to know what ‘rock bottom’ is; however, I think I know something of what it might feel like. The last two years of high school were like that for me; my mother lost her job and her house when I was seventeen, and we were couch-surfing all my junior year. We had literally no money, not even enough to feed ourselves for a while (since Mother would not allow herself to get back on public assistance).

I moved in with a friend of mine, and that worked out okay for about a year, but things soured between us and he kicked me out three weeks before I was due to move out to Tampa to go to college. It didn’t get much better from there for a while. But it did get better, in its own time — just not in the way I had planned for it to. What a difference four years can make in a person’s worldview…!

So, what would you say was the worst experience of your life, and how did you move on from it?

2

One of the worst periods of my life was when my husband was unemployed and we were living in a tiny apartment with our 18-month-old twins, with most of our possessions in storage.

The period ended when he found a job and we bought a house (we drained his retirement accounts to do it). He was hired on the same day that his unemployment benefits ran out, literally; had he not been hired then, we’d’ve started pulling the retirement money to live on while he took some kind of hourly job.

FTR, I’d’ve been glad to be the one working while he was unemployed, I would have taken any kind of job - but he absolutely COULD NOT deal with the twins. He was a wreck.

I knew going into it that things were going to be tough that summer, so right when my husband was laid off we moved to the city where my family lived. It meant trading our small apartment for the tiny one, but being able to take the kids over to my Mom’s house and Aunt’s house, and being a reasonable drive from the remainder of our relatives was a HUGE help. Huge.

The other thing I did was push my husband into a day therapy program after he told me he’d been looking at the guns at Wal*Mart.

Hmmm, I guess the short answer is, I planned contingencies for the worst and asked others for help.

3

I had some very, very difficult times about ten years ago. I won’t go into details, as they are intensely personal and private and somewhat humiliating, but suffice it to say I made a few bad choices and let some bad people into my life, and things spiraled downwards and fast. What I did was set some goals for myself, developed a plan and a support system, and met those goals. Pulled myself up, although it took a long time and I went without for a long time, and today I have pretty much everything I want and need.

4

Almost not finishing grad school (statute of limitations was looming), along with assorted relationship problems including romantic, family, and with my advisor.

Therapy was the catalyst and key… things that I learned that year still help me almost 15 years later.

5

I’m currently living it, actually, and in the process of pulling myself out of it.

Short backstory: I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It’s bipolar II, so I rarely get manic, I just have occasional periods of not feeling like shit. It’s been 11 years since it first got bad and I started therapy and counseling (I’m 26 now). But my first round of counseling and meds lasted only briefly as my parents couldn’t afford health insurance anymore. So for the past 9 years I’ve been dealing with it on my own, sometimes succesfully and others, not at all.

A little more than a year ago it became too much. I quit an awesome job, the only job I’ve ever really loved, because I couldn’t force myself out of bed in the morning. Then I flunked out of college, mostly because I’d spend weeks at a time in bed unable to perform even basic tasks like showering or doing the dishes. We’re talking maggots in the sink bad.

So with no income I ran out of money and lost my apartment. I’ve since moved in with my sister who says I’m welcome to stay as long as I like, provided I take steps towards getting better. The past month and a half I’ve been trying to get into a program so I can get back on medication and get counseling. Finally I got an appointment for next Tuesday so I can get back on my meds. Counseling is my next step, I’m waiting for a call back but I’ll probably just call again on Monday. I’ve discovered that unless you call approximately 30 times no one responds.

In the mean time, I’ve applied for public assistance, although I’m still waiting for a decision. Mainly, I know that although my sister says she can afford it, she really can’t. And also I know it’ll take probably 6 months to a year to become fully functional again, so I’m hoping with some public assistance I’ll be able to slowly work back to self-sufficiency. And because in the meantime, my 3 cats are living in my parent’s warehouse and if I can perhaps get it together in a month or two to get my own place again, then my cats won’t have to be lonely and sad and stuck in a warehouse.

So my plan basically is: 1) Get medication and therapy. Start to feel better. 2) Get a job. 3) Get an apartment. 4) Petition for readmission into college. 5) Go on with life.

I have to say that, without having friends and family to lean on, and without these non-profit organizations and government programs, I’d be totally screwed. I was at the point of couch-surfing and sleeping in my car before my sister invited me to stay with her. Unfortunately I feel terrible about asking for help, partly because it makes me feel like a failure and partly because I don’t want to burden my sister or the taxpayers. But I’m trying to look at it from the perspective that all of it will help me recover faster and become a productive member of society again.

6

When I was 17 I left home and became a legally emancipated minor. I did it because I had absolutely no alternative. The resulting fallout made my already horrendous adolescence about a million times worse. I worked full-time while attending high school and trying to make sense of everything that was happening to me. I thought about suicide every day.

How did I get through it? I don’t even know. It is not a very clear picture in my memory. I remember days where I ran out of the classroom sobbing uncontrollably and days where I felt absolutely nothing. I wanted to graduate Salutatorian and get into my dream university so I spent a great deal of time focusing on those goals. I was determined, more than anything else, not to become a statistic. You don’t have to be a high school drop-out if you run away from an abusive home–you don’t have to become a crack whore or a heroine addict or an alcoholic or someone who gets in trouble with the law. You can be a dignified and intelligent person with a character that is enhanced, not corrupted by your experiences.

I didn’t know it at the time of college acceptance, but I had a long road ahead of me, a lot of internal battles to fight, and a lot of emotional maturing to do. I still do. But the real sticking point for me, the true victory, and the way I believe I have always coped – is my determination that I am not only going to physically survive this, but that it is going to make me an emotionally stronger and more loving and compassionate person. I took all the shit that was thrown at me and I turned it into a limitless capacity for love and acceptance. I wasn’t handed this life I have – I earned it.

I wouldn’t trade the worst experience of my life for anything in the world. I gained so much wisdom and insight from it. The painful memories always give me something strong to fight against, always give me some challenge to face, which means life is never boring and I am always ready for the comparatively lame things that life throws at me on a daily basis. Tough times suck when you’re experiencing them, but eventually you can only look back on the past with an overwhelming sense of gratitude for everything you have now. A few years ago I had the word ‘‘impermanent’’ tattooed in Sanskrit on my left wrist. That one word sums up my entire life philosophy, and it is the reason I survived.

7

Your post, and particularly the last paragraph, moved me to tears. You are a remarkable person.

I have found that the only way out of the dark is to keep walking. Eventually you get to the light. One foot in front of the other.

8

Several bad patches - not to bore you with the details, but here’s some thumbnail sketches:

The one I was least pepared for was birth :smiley: - actually, my parents couldn’t afford another kid, but they were too proud to put me up for adoption, so while was taken care of, but only narrowly tolerated. (for a long time I simply thought I’d failed to make that all-important good first impression). But whenever my parents fought, there was always the subtext of it all being my fault. I got smacked around a lot and was often exiled to my crib. I vividly remember the moment once time there, while very distraught, when I realized that my teddy bear wasn’t much of a friend or comfort but just a goddamed stuffed toy.

And the time I re-emerged from service in the navy overseas. People didn’t know what to make of me: they knew veterans had issues, but still, civillians function in a world with its own limits and perspectives, which I’d had to leave behind. When you’re in an environment of daily filth and casual brutality, you quickly lose your ability to feel sorry for any living thing, and adopt whatever means you can just to get though the day. A year later I was listending to a radio story of a train engineer who saw two little boys on the tracks ahead, who only had time to jump off, run up and tackle them while the train passed over them. It was the first emotional response to anything I’d had in years.

So I’d offer three solutions;

  1. Adopt a wry sence of humor
  2. Do whatever it takes to get from one minute to the next
  3. Try do develop emotional availability beyond the basic survival techniques, if for no other reason than that you’ll need to love other people who’ve had it as bad or worse than you have, and you might as well put your shitbag of a life to good use.
9

Both my parents died just over a year ago.
I loved them and we were also best friends.
For the last few years of their life, they moved to be near me (at my suggestion).

I had no idea how hard it would hit me.

Fortunately I had a lot of help.
My sister and I really supported each other, especially over the funeral arrangements.
My friends were great too: one phoned me every day just to talk - it didn’t matter about what, and another came up each time to drive me around to deal with all the paperwork needed after a death.
Work gave me time off and the School Chaplain talked me through some aspects of grief.
My Doctor recommended grief counselling, and that’s been incredibly helpful. Just talking to a trained stranger means you can say things you wouldn’t say to anyone else. I found out things I’d kept bottled up for years.
Even my parents helped, by having clear wills and leaving details of their financial affairs and my Mum even planned her own funeral.

I would advise everyone to make a will (to avoid legal complications) and make sure your financial details are stored somewhere safe.
If you feel able, write a note about how you’d like your funeral to go. (Remember that if the worst happens, people are not going to be functioning well, and the fewer decisions, the better.)

10

My worst time wasn’t that bad, I guess. Not objectively. I was fed, well-cared for, secure and loved.

In my first year of CEGEP (sort of a junior college between high-school and university in Quebec) I did a lot of adjusting. I went from a very small, private, all-girls school where science was the only option to a huge, diverse school where I had to find my own way. I developed a fairly destructive crush and started slipping into a depression. It only got worse - I started failing my classes (which, if you know me, is INSANE - I’m one of the most grades and school-oriented people you’ll ever meet) and not even caring. My grandfather died, and my mother was very angry at me for not being there for her, which I couldn’t be (emotionally, that is - because I was too depressed myself). I decided to switch out of the hard-to-get-into science program I was in and switch to social sciences the next semester (which included history).

I had always been driven academically, and I failed half of my classes, one with an 18%. I had always had an excellent relationship with my parents - during this time period, at 17, they attempted to ground me for the first time ever. My mom even suggested I think about going to stay with a friend for an extended period of time. I was as suicidal as I have ever been - I don’t think I would have done it, deep down, but I had elaborate plans at the ready.

What changed? Well, the semester ended, and the guilt about classes went away. I stopped seeing certain people regularly. I got angry rather than sad. I started dating someone who made me happy. Certainly none of this was a deliberate effort by me - I think I was just lucky that my depression came to a natural end.

11

Seconded.

And it’s so damned difficult to remember even that when one is in the pit of despair.

My darkest times have been spread out. Several times as I contemplated my life, I have considered suicide; the last time was a few weeks ago, and I yelled for help to my counselor. I thought everything was falling apart, and my dreams were dead, yet then I was blesssed by unexpected mercy, and I’m on a new track now.

But I’ve been going into that darkness and out of it for many years. My counselor says that I’m a lot better than I was; I don’t go down as far or stay as long.

But the worst time? It’s hard to tell. I tend to curl away from the world when things go wrong. There was a time a few years ago when I simply didn’t show up for work for a week… and no-one noticed. That was bad. Then there were the 1990s, when half my family died. I don’t remember a lot. Then there was senior public school, when every day I walked off to school as if I were going to my death. Bullying, abuse, public shame… that was pretty bad. It was there, I think, that I learned how little chance I had in the social and romantic world. I’ve been trying to unlearn that ever since, and it is the most difficult thing I do.

12

In a 6 year period of time we had:

  1. twins born
  2. two parents with severe physical issues
  3. a third parent die suddenly and early, my last grand parent passed away.
  4. Unemployment issues which, thankfully, we were prepared for
  5. We had marital problems where we took out all the issues happening externally on the marriage and started to drift apart.
  6. Discovered the marriage was the one thing we had that WASN’T f-ed up and started working together on things.
  7. My spouse had a Nervous Breakdown requiring her to go on Short term disability

After 7, she got some help from a competent therapist and we altered her medication and realized she’d been really depressed since before the kids were born and had issues from childhood she hadn’t resolved.

In returning to her office, she discovered a LOT of the team mates in her group were in a similar boat and the employer realized it couldn’t keep working them as hard as it had. Things got re-organized, my Job started looking up, the kids got easier to care for, doing the math and actually living on one income for a couple of months gave us perspective.

I never EVER want to go back to that place again, but at least I know now how much emotional reserves we have.

13

Sometimes people will say, “How can you feel so sorry for yourself? Lots of people are worse off!” That always struck me as being totally wrong. How is it supposed to help you when you’ve lost one leg to be told that at least you didn’t lose them both? I look at everyone who still has two and feel wretched in comparison. (This is metaphorical, I have both legs yet, and feet on them, too.)

Looking in from the outside, it is bitterly hard to understand why a person is so low. I know a beautiful, bright girl and think she’s a creature of sunshine and then I learn she has attempted suicide and it’s beyond me. Can we ever really understand what goes on in someone else’s head? Can we ever truly understand how much pain another person can be in? Would it help if we did? Is there something I can do, for my bright and beautiful friend, something that would show her there are better days ahead?

Platitudes spill from me: keep walking, keep putting one foot in front of the other. And as Sunspace says, there are times when that is just too hard. I read the posts in this thread and my heart aches. I’ve had a good life, mostly. The bad things that have happened have come from the outside; through good fortune I am strong, I have not been crushed. * It is good fortune only, and I know it.*

But like** olivesmarch4th**, I would not undo the bad things. A life without pain would be a dreadful life, as surely as a life with too much pain is dreadful.

14

It’s a little crude, but I call that the ‘dick size’ competition. You think you’ve got it bad? Look how bad my life is!.

When all is said and done, all you have is a bunch of dicks. It’s not a competition, lots of people can have it bad, and I really don’t feel like I have to be the ‘winner’. Further, if you DO have it worse off than I do, telling me about it won’t make me say ‘You’re right! I don’t have a care in the world!’ and have me go skipping off whistling with joy.

15

I fear that it cannot be changed from without.

My counselor and I were talking about this last week.

Three weeks ago, when things fell apart, and the best time I had that week was at the dentist, I basically thought my dream was dead because of emotional collapse and my resulting screwups. I took an emergency day off work (almost falling apart in my boss’s office when asking), and went to my counselor in panic and despair, and he comforted me.

Then I went out of town to see my friends, who have worked for years to make the dream reality, and shared it with me. (Yet it was my old dream from childhood as well.) I expected to get my head ripped off. I went there as if I were walking to my death. (And I’ve seen my friend angry. One of the scariest sights ever.) Yet when I got there, there was a phone call, and far more unexpected help from someone I never would have dreamed would help. I cried on my friend’s shoulder, and it toiok me three days to get over the shock. So now things are completely different.

Last week I described what went on to my counselor. He said that the universe often displays great mercy towards me. Yet I feel that the universe is an unforgiving meat-grinder. I know, intellectually, that this is not so. I have things to give to the world and the capability to give them.

But, emotionally, that counts for naught. Emotionally, I’m still in grade seven. Or grade nine. Or amidst the ruins of my shattered family. Any of those cold, lonely places. It is not a logical thing! You can’t cure it with logic.

What worked for me was to get away from logic, get away from the intellect, get away from the whirring mind.

For me, touch makes the difference. My counselors introduced me to ‘bodywork’: simple human touch. It can be as elaborate as massage, but often a simple hug will do. Simply being physically next to a caring and supportive person, one who knows you and whom you trust, makes the difference. It calms me and restores me to the world. There have been sessions where my counselor and I did little but be next to each other. And it was worth the fee.

16

I think SDMB is not a huggy sort of place. But there are hugs in the ether, heading your way. All of you.

17

I have had a few pits in the past 46 years. The last one was when my business collapsed, taking my personal finances with it. I was looking at bankruptcy & foreclosure before it was “fashionable” to do so. I was incredibly alone in all this. People who I had trusted as longtime friends were at the heart of the business collapse & I found myself in lawsuits against people who I had once cared very much about. Family members that should have been there saying “we are here for you” were very silent. I felt the weight of responsibility for my family on my shoulders & frankly it was too heavy to carry for the first time ever. For a while, everything I touched turned bad. I felt like George Baily in “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

I could not find any work for my company and for a long time I could not find any job for myself. I was falling further & further behind on my mortgage, loan payments, etc. To say it was bad does not even begin to describe it. To top it off, this was all happening in winter (in Michigan - which is kind of like being in a cave).

How did I get out? With the support of some very good people - my wife, my brother, a few people I could call “friend” - and a whole lot of time. Eventually, I took jobs I hated, I got cashflow moving, I refinanced (twice) - each time losing equity in my home, but also consolidating debt & getting better terms. I moved on to a couple different jobs over a few years, eventually getting where I am now.

I remember for each of the next several Thanksgivings, the thing I was most grateful for was being another day further from that catastrophe. Eventually, it started getting better. Last Thanksgiving, I finally started thinking of more things I was grateful for than just time passing. Life is much better today - even if it is the middle of winter in Michigan and 2 degrees outside.

18

In 2005 we moved to a very rural and isolated town 2,600 miles away from anyone we knew (it was for a job). The loneliness and distress became so acute that my SO and I both became horrifically depressed; on top of the awful move, my 25 year-old brother died very suddenly at the exact time we were both feeling suicidal anyway. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad times.

It took about 18 months to feel relatively normal; in July we moved to our new place in a major urban area – this changed things enormously. We’re even further from California, but we’re back in a diverse, busy space that is more “us” and feels like home. I took Zoloft to help me dig out of the abyss of grief and loss; I think that '05-'07 actually put a PTSD-like dent in my brain.

Ironically, though, we often miss our little rural space that distressed us so. Things actually got better and even kind of fun the last six months we were there. Life is strange.

19

My “rock bottom” happened back in 2001 and while I was 23. While it is profoundly personal, I share it because it made me the person who I am and who I have become. I refused to be ashamed of it. Though it is long winded so bare with me.

I was sitting on my boyfriend’s bedroom floor on a Tuesday night (In the middle of August) when my entire life changed. I found out I was pregnant. I was still living with my parents at the time and very much fearful of what my father would say, do, think, etc. Not so much my mother, but I feared my father while growing up most of my life. Over the course of the following week my boyfriend (at the time) and I talking about aborting the baby, though it wasn’t something I wanted to do. It felt like something I HAD to do to avoid any wrath that I would have gotten from my father. At some point I ended up talking to my cousin and confiding to him of what was going on. He assured me that while my parents would be upset at first, they would stand beside me and their grandchild.

I wanted to keep the baby. I always did. Though being fearful of my father, I felt that I needed to do whatever I had to to avoid him being upset with. Though after talking to my cousin, I decided that I needed to do what I felt was right and that was keeping the baby. That night I told my mother that I was pregnant. She, also concerned of how my father would react, told me that she would tell my father herself. She figured it would be better coming from him. Later that night when he arrived home from work, she told him. There wasn’t 30 seconds in between the time she told him until the time he kicked me out of the house. I packed my stuff and went to my boyfriends house. He (BF) proceeded to tell me that he didn’t want that baby, and while it was fine that I was staying with his family, stated he wouldn’t help at all with the child.

Every thing and everyone was against me, but I was determined to make this work. I started working doubles. All the over time I could get. Banking all the extra money and started making goals. I was determined to give that baby a life that I never had. One that I always dreamed of having. I wrote letters to it. Found a place for us to stay. Worked out medical coverage for the time the baby would have been born. I wanted to give this baby a chance when no one else was willing to. I wanted it to have the best of everything and I refused to let someone say or tell me otherwise. I had to the power to make it happen and I was determine to make it reality.

Fast forward to 3 days after 9/11. My mother talked him into letting me back into the house. I decided that it would help me save even more money if I just sucked it up a while. Once I moved back in my father demanded that we have a “family meeting” to discuss how as a family we were going to “handle” my being pregnant. After hours of screaming and hollering at each other my father looked at me dead in the eye and said, “I have never lied to you and I am not going to start now. There isn’t a day that goes by that before I go to bed at night and when I wake up in the morning, that I pray to GOD you have a miscarriage. Because you are not ready to be a mother.”

(about) 2 weeks later it was found that my pregnancy was eptopic and a week later it ended in a miscarriage.

To say I hated everyone would be a complete understatement. My father worse of all. I had this mentality that the world wronged me and I was owed something. I began acting out, hanging out with people that didn’t have my best interest in mind and I really didn’t care about my actions. I wanted to fight anyone that provoked me. The anger was… just unreal. I was unhinged. Then one night while hanging out with these friends, one of them thought it would be a great idea to steal something from a store. The police got involved and when it was my time to be questioned, I remember leaning against the police car while being read my Miranda rights thinking, “What the hell am I doing?” The blue lights still flashing. Two stern officers staring at me, demanding answers, and as I was standing there I could visibly see the pulverable “fork in the road”. Which way did I really want to take my life?

I remember going home that night and cried myself to sleep. All sorts of things hit me that night. Why did I feel I deserved a fresh new start just because I was having a baby? Why did I feel the baby deserved a better life then myself? I am not saying that it didn’t deserve it, it did… Though without the baby, why didn’t I feel like I didn’t deserve it? Why couldn’t I have good things in my life? Why couldn’t I still have goals and have a better life for myself? Why was a able to put forth all this effort, time and money in to making a better life for someone else, but at the same time not for myself? Was I not worth it? The time? The energy?

It took all that. All that lost. The lost of my child. Seeing my father’s truth in his eyes. Seeing everyone around me disappear. It took all that for me to realized not only did I need to depend on myself to make any dream or goal come true, but that I needed to believe in myself as well. That I deserve so much more then the crap I settle for. Dream big, because while there may be plenty of people knocking you down or trying to get in your way… anything is possible if you just believe in yourself.

I’m not saying that I can wake up every morning and believe I can do anything. It is still a work in progress. Though the huge “light bulb” for me, so to speak, was that, why was I willing to work so hard for someone else, but not myself?

I found the answer was because I believed I didn’t deserve it… I realized after my “rock bottom” is that I do deserve it. I just have to allow myself.

Sorry for the novel. and the many misspellings and grammar errors that are scattered with in the response. :wink:

20

Mine was in 1981. My job had lost funding the previous January, and I was having no luck in finding a new one. About the only thing going well was my writing – it gave me time to write, at least, and I was in a creative writing class.

Then, in mid-April, the bombshell landed. My wife went out, supposedly to an organizational meeting, and didn’t come home that night. After lying away worrying about her, she finally arrived at about 7 a.m.

She had been with another guy.

I was devastated. I just hadn’t seen it coming. I knew she liked to flirt, but I trusted her, and that betrayal of trust was just too much. I tried to figure things out, but, a few days later, she told me it was older.

And that she wanted me out of the house.

Without a job, I have very little leverage. I ended up moving in with her grandmother and aunt (who thought she was nuts). I ended up in a small room in the attic. When summer came along, it got infested with fleas.

So I was out of a job, my marriage had broken up, and there were little black insects crawling up my legs whenever I went in my room.

What got me through? My writing. And a letter from George Scitners, editor of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine*, that said, “I would like to buy your story if you make a few changes.”

Through my writing class, I met the love of my life, and the writing got me one job after another until I got back on my feet. So, basically, it was a matter of doing what I loved and have everything fall into place over time.