Creaky: Thank you… I really do appreciate that.
My lowest moment, hands down:
My mother was diagnosed with cancer at 55, it killed her in about 3 months (about 2 months before she and my father were both going to retire and follow their dream of buying a motorhome and spending the rest of their days travelling around North America, by the way.).
She had been taken across country to New York in the final days, as she wanted to be with her sister. She died. I got the phone call, and flew from Oregon to New York for the funeral.
A day or so later, we are all getting dressed to go to the funeral… the mood, as you might imagine, is somewhat sober. The radio is playing in the background as we tie ties, etc. The DJ comes on and says, “Jerry Garcia is dead…” My uncle (another Deadhead) and I just looked at each other for a moment (those of you who are Deadheads will understand… those of you who are not, just skip this part)… then went to my mother’s funeral.
At the funeral, my grandmother (92 years old, at the time) lost it, and dissolved into inconsolable tears crying “God no!” over and over again.
After the funeral (oddly enough, my mother is buried in a cemetary overlooking Attica Prison! Weird!), I finally cried in the car on the way back to my Aunt’s house… but only for a minute (I seem to be emotionally blocked… I rarely cry, and if I do it’s only for a moment…).
We arrive at my Aunt’s house, where there is to be some kind of weird post-funeral lunch (I guess this is standard in the US, but I’m not big on funerals and haven’t been to many). I really didn’t feel like making small talk with several dozens of people who I didn’t know, but I figured it was my familial duty to put in an appearance… so after crying for another minute in a back bedroom, I ventured outside to where the buffet was being held.
Trying to maintain my cool, I asked my father where the plates were, and he snapped at me (I don’t remember what he said, but it was something along the lines of ‘Only a moron wouldn’t be able to see where the plates are!’) in front of everyone there (no blame to him… he loved my mother with all his heart, and still loves her to this day!). I almost punched him… thank God I didn’t! (don’t misunderstand, my father and I get along great; it’s just that we both have big problems dealing with emotions…)
I thought, ‘F*** this!’ and left. I went to the front of the house, sat by myself on the porch, and chain-smoked…
I hope I never feel that low again as long as I live!
My mother was an AMAZING woman, and 6 or so years later, I still miss her every day!
My lowest moment in life took place four months from my eighteenth birthday. There were a lot of circumstances that led up to it. When I was nine my mother divorced my father because he was an abusive alcoholic. For four years my family had to try very hard to make ends meet. My mother had four children, ages nine, four, three and two. My aunt was in a similar situation, having just divorced her husband and having three children of her own. She moved in and took care of us while my mom worked to try to feed us all by working a factory job. Hard as this time was, it is one of the happiest times of my childhood. Things were still golden then. It was very much as if, for those three years, I had two brothers and four sisters. We were one thundering heard of children. When I was twelve, my aunt got on her feet and moved out, taking my three cousins with her, and then we were just four. It fell to me to care for them, and I was the best second-mother that I could be, though I was still a child, and I made mistakes. I cooked the meals, bathed them, got them ready for school and hurried the mile and a half from school so that I would be there to meet the bus when they got home. When I was fifteen, my mother married a man that she had met at the plastics factory that she had worked in. We had only met him a handful of times before he moved in, and they married about a month later. She had dated a few men before him, but the relationships had all fallen through for reasons that I was not privy to.
My mother’s new husband, Pete, was another abusive alcoholic. One that was better for her than my father had been, but far worse for us. He was a controlling drunk, a man who was constantly drinking from the time he got up in the morning. He said that we could not talk when we were in the car. Laughing in the house was not permitted, talking loudly was forbidden. We could not walk barefoot at all, and must eat all food using utensils - even pizza and frenchfries. The kitchen, ever the heart of the house, became his domaign. He limited access to my mother. If one of us wished to speak to her, we must stand in the doorway to the kitchen silently until noticed, then he would come over and ask what we wanted. If he deemed it important (I can only think of a handful of times he did) then we were allowed to go into the kitchen to speak to my mother. We ate different meals then they did, at different times. He took over the cooking, and it was pretty much fishsticks or hot dogs, macaroni and cheese and corn for many years. Several hours later, after we were in bed, he would cook dinner for himself and my mother, usually steak and potatoes. We would lay upstairs and smell it cooking.
When I was seventeen it all came to a head. Before leaving my grandmother’s house, I asked if I could stay up and watch a movie on TV when we got home. My mother said that it was alright. Everyone went up to bed, and about a half-hour later, Pete came down and started yelling. He grabbed me by the throat, and started to squeeze until I couldn’t breathe. I had never even contemplated doing what I did next, to anyone. I punched him in the face hard enough to break his glasses. Not square-on, but pretty good for a bookish, chubby, 5’4" seventeen year old up against a 6’3" man that scared the crap out of her. He let go and I went to my room, shaking. Ten minutes later, my mom came in and yelled at me. I told her what happened. All she said was “Peter said that he grabbed your shoulder.” That was all she had to say, I guess. It was obvious to me as it never had been before how deeply her loyalties were, and where they lay. After that, Pete knew it, too. He moved my bedroom into the family dining room, refusing to take any of the dining furniture out, and making sure that I had no privacy at all, at any time. The kids and I had to still eat there. He told me “This is my house and I can make you sleep out on the porch like a dog if I want to.” He turned my dog in to the humane society to be killed, saying it was a stray. He would make me sit on the kitchen floor while he yelled at me for my bad grades in school for hours at a time.
One day, he came in to my room as we were eating because he’d heard us talking, and held a fork to the back of my neck and said “don’t give me a reason.”
That night, four months from my eighteenth birthday, I lay in bed and thought about suicide for about the hundredth time, when something occured to me. Why kill myself? I’m not the one bothering anyone. In the flash of an instant I knew what it would be like to kill someone, to taste the blood…and I was glad.
I sat up in bed, and realized that I was capable of murder. It had never occured to me that I would, under any but the most extreme stranger-has-a-gun-and-is-trying-to-kill-you, be capable of the taking of a life. I was an extremely introverted sort, painfully so, but now I knew.
The next day I packed up one bag and two boxes and moved out. Even so, for years I was wracked with guilt because I had to leave my sisters/daughters and brother/son behind.
That was my low. I hope that I never feel that way again.
Well, this certainly isn’t on the same level as anything that’s been posted here, but I wanted to share it anyway.
My lowest point was 1990. I’d been kicked out of the University of Iowa because I hadn’t paid my tuition bills, and I completely ruined my relationship with the first real love of my life because I was so stressed out and depressed over it. She left me quite suddenly - one morning she was there, and that evening when I came home from work she was gone. I moved back to New Hampshire that week. Within two months of my return I’d been kicked out of my mother’s house, end living with a woman I absolutely loathed.
The realization that none of this would have happened if I’d gotten off my ass and actually filled out the paperwork for student aid at the beginning of the fall semester was a hard one.
Fortunately this woman got fired from her job, she moved back to Michigan, I was able to get a decent place which didn’t make too much noise about the dog I owned at the time, and slinging burgers paid just enough to live on. After about a year of that I finally woke up and figured out if I didn’t get back to college I was going to go nuts. So I got out of the rut, anyway - it’s become clear to me that I’m still battling the depression that got a serious boost from that time in my life. But I have a great wife, a stepdaughter who bugs the living daylights out of me but can be the sweetest thang this side of God’s creation when she wants to be, and very fond memories of a butt-ugly dog.
loislane: My only advice to you is - don’t end it. Lord knows I wanted to some days (and, to be completely honest, some days I still do) but everything has worked out OK. If your parents can help you out with it, go see a psychiatrist at least once. It’s worth it.
my life so far:
HIGH
-----
LOW ----------- -----------------
So, I guess my lowest moment is everything except that time in the middle when I believed things could get better.
Sigh.
— G. Raven
One September afternoon in 1984. I had just moved, with my family, to a new state, and was the new kid, besides being a freshman, in my high school.
Middle school had been two years of undiluted hell. My best friend had died the summer before 7th. My family was completely dysfunctional. I was harassed beyond bearing at school. (I know there are other people who can claim those two things, but I assure you, my situation was extreme.) I had succumbed to an eating disorder, and although I was never diagnosed, I think I had a nervous breakdown, or was one degree away from it. Well, I’d managed, with the help of a therapist, to pull myself together…but when we moved, I didn’t have her anymore, and my parents assumed that I didn’t need further therapy, since I was in a different environment.
When I got to this new school, I honestly thought my life was going to go from black-and-white to color. Instead, I took one step into the building and got hit full force with a blast of let’s-pick-on-the-new-kid. After a couple of weeks, it died down, or so I thought, and I started to look for my niche. Ha.
I was on the bus coming home one Friday afternoon. This one guy who was particularly sadistic was in the front seat, yelling insults to my outfit, and to me in general. I didn’t take the bait, reasoning that if he wanted to act like a middle-schooler, that was okay, but it didn’t reflect on me. Well, the bus pulled up at my stop. I got up and walked past the guy, and as I was descending the steps I heard this “pssstt…” I put my hand up and felt a blob of shaving cream on my head.
Months later, some girl referred to the incident and said, “It looked like you were crying.” Trying to keep my voice steady, I deadpanned, “No, I was laughing.” Anyway, I got to my house and my mom opened the door. Seeing my expression, she baby-talked, “Aw…wudza madder?”
I shrieked, “Mom, stop treating me like a baby!” (that was an ongoing problem) and pushed past her. I guess she must have seen, because she went into the lounge while I bent my head over the kitchen sink. I’ve cried enough tears in my life to float the Exxon Valdez, but that was the only time in my life that I have ever actually sniveled.
I’ve had a lot of bad things happen to me, before and since, but that was unquestionably the lowest moment. I had come to that supposedly pastoral Midwestern town with hope in my heart, thinking that people would give me a chance, and I got that. Added to that was my frustration and helplessness; it was Friday, I didn’t know where this guy lived, and I had no recourse. None at all. And I couldn’t talk myself out of the conviction that this was going to be the rest of my life: not only an outcast but a target, everywhere and with everyone. I wasn’t human.
I honestly don’t know what I would have done if two things hadn’t happened. First, a friend who had seen this called just to see if I was okay. I was too hysterical to talk at the time, but I called him back later and thanked him. Second, the girl to whom I was a “companion-not-a-baby-sitter” stopped by to visit me off the clock. I saw the question in her face (I hadn’t washed the shit off yet) followed by comprehension. She did not ask one thing, but accompanied me upstairs and sat on the closed toilet, chattering about her day, while I rinsed my hair in the sink. I don’t know how she had the diplomacy to not discuss it, (her parents were icebergs, that’s why they palmed her off on me) but she didn’t, and I loved her for it. Amazing that she was more sensitive at nine than that shiteater was at 14.
Wow, that was a long post.