This question popped into my head the other day, and even after considerable thought, I haven’t come up with a good answer for myself yet. What about you guys?
Physically or mentally?
Tie between graduate school and giving up smoking after 15 years at 2 packs a day.
Being a dad is really hard at times but it doesn’t count to me because it’s so worth it.
What kinda hard are you talking about?
Emotionally? That time I killed that guy in Reno… But seriously, in the emotional department for me it was choosing to put down a long lived pet. On several occasions. And in those cases it was just advancing old age and deciding when enough was enough when the pets could have possibly gone on another year or two (as oppossed to the vet saying something like “well, its now or a a few weeks from now and its gonna be serious suffering the whole time”.
Watching my wife die.
Staying alive for over half a century.
Being in Iraq and counting the days until I came back. And then finding out I would no longer be welcome in my own home.
Right now it’s when I had to completely cut off all contact from the person I loved most because she no longer loved me.
Talk to me here in a month or three when I think I have to do it again…and I love this one more
ETA: Holy shit this is going to be a depressing thread
Scored a full opera and then gave it its world premier. That was a hell of a year!
Cutting off contact with my family.
Physically? Have two babies.
Mentally? Co-author a book.
An awful lot of people make me feel like a real candy-ass.
Breaking up with my ex hurt like hell, but it wasn’t really hard because I’d already done my grieving about it before it actually happened. It was really hard to watch him suffer, though.
I suppose the only thing I’ve ever set out to do that didn’t really come easy for me that I persevered and worked for it anyway has been running.
Physically: Hiking across the Grand Canyon
Mentally: Taking care of my mother while she was dying of brain cancer.
hearing that my baby daughter (just a week old) would almost certainly die before she was a year old, and then watching her die when she was four months old.
Taking care of my grandma, and then a year later, my mom. I had to watch them die, and I couldn’t do a fucking thing about it. I just tried to make them comfortable, care for them the best I could, and make their passing easier on them.
Also, having to make the decision to put down a beloved pet. Many times.
Mentally- studying for (and passing!) the New York bar exam.
Physically- completing my first marathon. I was undertrained and it was the most grueling 4.5 hours of my life.
Emotionally- breaking up with, then missing, a girlfriend. I made a huge mistake.
Get through 2010.
Emotionally: Watching people die, then acting as the executor of their estates.
Mentally: Sitting for the CISSP exam (and passing) After six hours of staring at questions and answering them, I scarcely knew my own name.
Physically: Living with a spine full of damaged discs, causing chronic pain. I’ve had doctors look at the MRIs and ask how the hell I was able to walk. Well, Doc, not moving hurts as much as moving, so I may as well move.
Burying my father and quitting drinking–in that order.
It’s a tie.
Legally emancipated at 17, worked full time to support myself while finishing high school, graduated Salutatorian. That was hard.
Got my MSW. That was hard.
Runner ups include not speaking to Mom for a year, undergoing prolonged exposure therapy for PTSD, and supporting my husband through his own grad program.
My condolences to everyone in this thread who have suffered such devestating loss.