I think about things such as firing somebody a week before Christmas which was hard but, after reading what some of y’all have been through that’s nuttin’.
There are some damn strong people on this board.
olives working full-time and graduating Salutatorian from high school, is, well, just beyond impressive!
The most noteworthy things I’ve done were not the hardest. Like I cut off my father, but that was easy for me. Probably the hardest was dropping out of college and moving back in with my mom, because I was *so *depressed that even getting out of bed in the morning was a herculean feat, never mind getting dressed. And I had to admit to myself that I was failing at being an independent adult. I took that extraordinarily hard.
Mentally: receiving a phone call telling me my brother was dead and my parents were in the hospital. I had to make a hair-on-fire trip back home, handle the funeral arrangements, cleaning up the house, etc., help retrieve my brother’s belongings from his home and a ton of other things…and then go back to work.
Physically: I’ve had both a kidney stone and a gallstone attack. Thought I was going to die both times. The pain was excruciating.
Getting my Master’s in Mathematics. I ate, breathed and slept Math for 21 months and it was not easy.
More short term?
Going back in the stock market in April 2009. The technical analysis I followed said to get back in and I did but only after some agonizing. I am not embellishing when I say that it was the hardest decision (not process) I ever made…even more than deciding to ask my wife to marry me, or deciding on a job offer, or deciding to leave teaching, or deciding to go to grad school.
Burying my parents.
Watching my sister die.
Admitting that I needed help, admitting I had lost my way, admitting I didn’t like the person I saw myself becoming; admitting that person scared me.
Gowning up to do internal cardiac massage on an three day old.ed Succeeded, save a 1.2 kg life.
Physically, I used to say it was pulling corn. One year my stepfather let me help him get the corn in for the farm animals because I needed the money. He had about two acres planted. He’d drive the truck forward a few feet, get out and join me in the bed, and we’d twist-n-pull each ear. It took days, and even wearing thick gloves I still had blisters on my blisters. Then years and years later I got ARDS, and survived it. I fought like crazy even tho I had no idea what had happened or what was going on. That was hands down the hardest thing I’ve ever done, physically and mentally.
Emotionally there are quite a few.
Life is hard, then well you know.
Saying, “Yes, it is in agreement with my father’s wishes that he not be kept alive using a breathing tube or other extreme measures” and then watching him die.
Moving to a foreign country where I didn’t now anyone or speak a word of the language, then live there, get a job and function for over 2 years.
1.) Leaving my son’s dad. #1.
2.) Having a child alone (and then moving across country when he was a year old!)
3.) Cutting off contact with my parents
4.) Shelving law school to pick something more predictable and responsible (teaching) – that’s ultimately the hardest thing I have ever done and I regret it about once a week…until I realize I can be home by 5:30 and hang out with my kid.
5.) Reporting a crime
6.) Rejecting a marriage proposal. My life could’ve been comfortable.
Building my garage. A series of 18 to 20 hour days in the cold of night and the heat of day, sharp metal, either cold or hot depending, hard concrete, wind, dust and no help. Thousands and thousands of self-tapping screws.
Consulting.
That’s so cold it sends a shiver up my spine. And yet, your posts seem (to me) to be measured, stable and thought-out. (So far. Don’t go killing innocents tomorrow.)
Herculean efforts. Been there. They count, but never for what they’re worth.
Physically: Running a marathon.
Mentally: Running a marathon.
ETA: (I was 45 years old and 40lbs overweight)
mmm
Graduate school put a number on me mentally. I’ve never been so smart as I was when I passed my comprehensive exam.
My post-doc down in Florida put a number on me physically. Working out in the field can be exhausting when it’s just a couple of times every month during the summer. So I didn’t know what I was in store for with daily field work. And not just “Oh, let’s just hop in the truck and we’ll be back in a couple of hours” field work. But waking up at godforsaken hour so we could meet a helicopter out on a remote levee, and then flying out to the Middle of Nowhere Marsh, where we’d be in knee-to-waist deep water all day. In the South Florida heat, under the thunderous sky, with the mosquitos and sawgrass and gators. Got a pee? You’re working in your toilet! Need to call someone? Did you bring the satellite phone? Did you charge the satellite phone? Did you forget the GPS? Did you bring some water to drink? Watch out for the madtom barb! And the creeping water bug! And the water mocassin in the bushes! And quit your crying about menstrual cramps! No wants to hear about that!
Every day was the same–exhausting. I got super strong, but my skin aged considerably and in all of my pictures from that time I look like a hot mess.
I can’t think of the hardest thing I’ve ever had to experience emotionally.
(Oh, what the hell…)
In descending, non-chronological order:
The last one, obviously, I didn’t do. And not to glamorize it or go all “emo” or anything—especially considering it’s the lowest on the list—but yeah, it was during a very shatteringly low point in my life, and I came to the determination that that was the best option I had.
Like I said, I don’t want to glamorize that at all, and seeing things through the haze of depression tints everything anyway, but I’ll just say that if things had been as truly hopeless as they seemed to be at the time, well…it wasn’t that crazy an idea, at least on paper.
But after that, it was…well, it was hard, almost like a stunned period of grieving for myself, but it was almost peaceful. I had a “plan” all set up, a timetable to get things done…just a sense of “it’s okay now—I don’t have to worry anymore. I don’t have to be afraid any more—it’s all going to be taken care of.” I almost wonder now if that’s anything like what finding out that you’re dying is like, and coming to grips with it.
And in a really hideous way, it actually helped me out, a little…my grandfather and my aunt both died unexpectedly the year all that was happening—my aunt on the day of my grandfather’s memorial—and, well, I really wasn’t feeling much of anything at the time, which sure numbed the blow.
Anyway, well—like I said, obviously, I didn’t do it. I finally spoke up, changed my situation, got some help, etc., etc. And I can safely say that I’m generally better off for it. 
But yeah, that’s my sob story about the third hardest thing I ever had to do.
Sit up to get an epidural while in transitional back labor with a stuck baby.
I think sometimes just having the plan can give a depressed person a tremendous sense of control over their life. I was suicidal a couple of months ago and when I told my husband I’d been doing some research on suicide, he made me stop making a plan. I was furious, trying to explain to him that I hadn’t decided to kill myself, I just needed to make a plan so I could know that option was there. I understand why he didn’t understand, but I felt so out of control of my life at that time I really needed something to hang on to. Obviously it’s a very high risk situation when someone makes a suicide plan, but the experience gave me insight into why people do it.
People are so narrow of focus when they are that depressed, though. The reason I was suicidal was because I had been unemployed for ten months, and I didn’t know it at the time but I had done really well at a prior interview. Four days after I made the decision not to kill myself, I got a job. I remember just laying awake and realizing with dawning horror I almost threw my entire life away over something that had already been resolved.