As always, yes and no. I'm a single father, my partner died when our daughter was 1.5 years old. A baby requires constant attention and care, so I didn't quite have the option of falling into some kind of depression and just doing nothing.
That said, I quite miss the abundant free time I used to have in my other life. Nowadays is constant battle about the littlest things. I pour the milk the wrong way and get screamed at for 15 minutes.
Wikipedia says "Depression is a mental state of low mood and aversion to activity" - that's what I meant.
Mental illness is I think a different thing. Depression doesn't imply mental illness, nor does mental illness imply depression. I understand and agree that many people let mental illness come between them and whatever. It's a problem. It's just a different problem.
It's difficult to say what is a choice and what isn't. Is anything my choice? Perhaps the world is deterministic, so nothing is anyone's choice. But also, I have seen people who seemingly choose to wallow in their grief.
Also what is depression? I'm very sad that my partner died. I miss her. Some people have a chemical imbalance in their body. These are entirely different things. Perhaps I shouldn't have used that word, which has so many different meanings as to lose meaning altogether.
When you have a kid and don't want to get out of bed the whole day, eventually the kid is hungry enough to start screaming, and it will keep screaming until you get out of bed and feed it. It really is in everyone's mutual interest, depression or not. It's harder to stay depressed when you have to do things. It's easier to stay depressed when you can lie in bed the whole day.
Thanks for restating, I get where you're coming from.
Also your reply to another comment made me realize this is also a language mixup on my side. I didn't realize there is a depression (mood) in English. My native language has the major depressive disorder as depression, not sure if there is a term for the mood. Sorry for not checking this assumption before but I guess my perception of suggesting 'have you tried not being depressed?' just didn't sit well with me.
It is never a choice and it is always a choice because it is fundamentally an internal psychological battle.
I personally think that viewing it as a choice is the more productive of the two. That is to say, people have the choice to persevere, keep trying to improve, and trying to recover. Nothing will change without intent.
Oh man, I’m really sorry to see Jake passed. I read their updates every few months when they’d land on HN; it made me sad to see the past tense of “dying” this time. Rest in peace
Remember this tragedy and the millions like it when you read the news today.
Trump and Musk are killing the very research that has a shot at saving lives and preventing these families from being torn apart. NIH and NSF are being gutted. Universities won't be able to do bio research at all under the new 15% cap on NIH indirect costs.
These decisions which save no appreciable amount of money have a real impact on people whose children must now grow up without them. As a new father this is really heartbreaking.
People don’t believe indirect costs actually fund research and accordingly see this as directing more money into important, life-saving research.
From their perspective, the origin of this thread is someone using a tragedy to emotionally manipulate on behalf of bloated institutions and their administrations — and every bit as monstrous as you believe their views are. Perhaps even more so.
Bio research needs buildings. Electricity, heat, lights need to be on in those buildings and they need maintenance. Labs need equipment and often very specialized and expensive space. Not to mention someone needs to do accounting, payroll, taxes, immigration, maintenance, legal, ethics, etc. And all of these people need facilities, offices, computers, etc. Just like any corporation!
These are indirect costs. You cannot do research without them.
What's going to happen if the government cuts off most indirect costs is that we're going to be forced to do research that can be covered by those costs.
So, no, more money isn't going to go to better research. It's going to go to much worse research and it will be a massive waste.
Instead of doing the best research I can, I'll need to think about the lowest overhead projects so that my department doesn't go bankrupt. That means taking no risks, avoiding new data collection, not starting up anything radically new that might not have an immediate payoff, etc. That's a bad deal for everyone!
Good scientists don't want to do bad research. The best will leave.
This will destroy the lead that the US has in science and technology over the rest of the world. Never mind kill countless people who would have been saved by new treatments.
> What's going to happen if the government cuts off most indirect costs is that we're going to be forced to do research that can be covered by those costs.
The whole debate is whether 15% indirect costs is sufficient or whether it needs to be 30%+. Without a doubt universities are bloated and many don’t invest appropriately in their facilities — but where is the appropriate line?
Unfortunately, you didn’t add to that debate: you assumed the conclusion and then catastrophized based on your assumption. That exact style of argumentation is what makes people distrust that 30%+ really is needed — because nobody itemizes how, they just immediately resort to shaming and emotional manipulation.
> That means taking no risks, avoiding new data collection, not starting up anything radically new that might not have an immediate payoff, etc.
That’s compounded by all your personal examples of how this impacts you being direct costs — which have greater funding, with this change. And your claim that you can no longer do them dubious at best.
This thinking is completely backward. If there is an established threshold, and you want to change it, it is on you to do the homework to determine that the lower threshold will be sufficient and won't cause harm. It's not the responsibility of the people currently doing research (the way they've done so for years) to justify the current threshold.
Discussions with university researchers I know personally indicated an inappropriate amount was going to the university at large, rather than project funding.
They looked at a handful of cherry picked charities that love to donate to high profile projects. Universities subsidize these grants internally to get other donations!
When I get money from say the Gates foundation, they are almost always topping up existing research not doing something new. On a high profile topic donors are attracted to.
These cherry picked foundations also give very little money; well under 1% of what we bring in. So the lack of indirect costs has a minor effect on the system that gets balanced by other well meaning donors.
Had they looked at other grants they would have seen that the indirect costs are in line with what NIH was paying. The bulk of other grants includes NSF, DARPA, ONR, etc.
Or they could have asked, when a corporation gives a university money, what do they think is a reasonable overhead rate? Because we don't accept money from for profit entities at anything less than the full overhead rate. And corporations pay it because it's reasonable. That's because they fund a lot of research and because they aren't a charity we would subsidize with other donations.
Or they could ask. When a corporation gets an NIH grant, what are their indirect costs? Are university indirect costs in line? After all everyone needs to keep the lights on.
Corporations are not subject to the cap at all! They can get a grant and charge 100% overhead. This only applies to universities. The government could not give a biotech company a grant with 15% overhead, no company would ever take it.
I have seen the indirect costs that some major corporations charge. 100% is low for them! And the government pays it. In every single contract with industry.
Except for universities. That they single out to dry to drive into insolvency.
So no. They didn't look at other grants. They could have computed countless statistics against tens of millions of grants for hundreds of billions of dollars. They picked the most elite nice small charities that give out a few hundred grants that we fund ourselves for the most bleeding heart projects.
> You only listed peer government grant agencies — which people believe have similar problems to NIH.
No. I also gave two other options.
Get the overhead rate of corporations from government contracts.
Or get the overhead rate that corporations pay to universities, just like the government.
> And the same people generally believe that’s also full of fraud and waste. So what’s your argument?
So then compare overhead rates in commercial contracts between corporations.
> So why don’t you do that, to prove them wrong? It sounds really easy.
Oh yes. I will send NIH, Musk, and Trump a letter, they will realize the error of their ways and change course. Come on. Now you aren't discussing things in good faith.
Although for the record major universities, including mine, have already written such letters to the administration. Much good that did.
All of these numbers are publicly available. Feel free to look them up. It's bread and butter economics.
But no. This isn't about proving anyone wrong. These people don't care about right or wrong. We are so past that. This is about their attempt to break the system. The fallout of which will be disastrous.
The impact of the wholesale dismantlement of our research capacity won't be seen by the average person for a while. Maybe a good 10 to 20 years. Then slowly you'll notice that all of the new companies, medicines, etc. have a different language on them, their names sound a bit foreign, that foreign stock markets are getting attractive, and that someone else is getting rich instead of us.
Restarting research will be nearly impossible. Europe has been trying to restart its research enterprise for more than half a century and the US still dominates despite massive EU investment. The biggest winner will be China who is paying a lot to attract researchers.
I call bullshit because as the other poster said, research will not happen in an island, there are much much less invasive ways to cut spending than what is happening.
I have a friend who is caught up in this and it is chaos.
Putting the fox in charge of the hen house is where it went wrong.
It's weird how a series of big things happening in a short period of time changes who you are as a person, and not always for the better.
When I failed to stop an acquaintance from killing himself a few years ago [1], it really fucked me up. I barely knew the guy, but I couldn't stop myself from feeling guilty over it, and I still have nightmares about it.
It led to a severe funk of depression that I still haven't gotten over, and it's led to poor sleep, poor performance at work, an increased irritability towards pretty much everyone, and I'm not completely convinced that that will ever stop.
I've seen therapists, taken various medications for depression and PTSD, trauma dumped onto pretty much anyone who will listen, and I think I'm a worse person now than I was in 2021.
I guess the likelihood of an event like this happening approaches 1 as you get older, but it doesn't mean it's not terrible.
I was reflecting just yesterday how, as we get older, gradually more and more of those who have been part of our sphere for significant portions of our lives (whether direct acquaintances, or just people who we know because of their public actions) begin to leave us, and how everyone who passes, whoever they are and however well we knew them, leaves a space that can't be filled.
I'm truly sorry for all that you've been through and I hope you find comfort. Reading through your other post it seems likely to me that nothing you said or did could have made any difference.
> I'm truly sorry for all that you've been through and I hope you find comfort. Reading through your other post it seems likely to me that nothing you said or did could have made any difference.
Yeah I know, that's not really why I feel guilty, at least not exactly. I feel guilty because I noticed signs of someone who was suicidal, and explicitly chose to not do anything. Even if nothing would have changed, I still think I should have tried to do something, even if it was futile.
It feels like the universe was giving me a character test, and it feels like I failed it. I would like to think that when push comes to shove, I'd do the right thing, at least in regards to someone's life being on the line, but I guess at some fundamental level that's simply not true, or at least it wasn't in 2021.
I mean, I realize that no good comes from feeling bad about myself over it, certainly not for three years, but human psychology is pretty annoying sometimes.
For what it's worth, don't do this, you also know you need to give people space and in hindsight, because of what happened, you only now think should've done something but I'm sure there were wholesome reasons why you avoided intervening in the first place.
Just as easily they didn't make the attempt and you would've thought you made the right call.
Guilt and shame are two of the most complex and difficult to grapple with human emotions. You definitely didn't do anything wrong, but some people's brains will latch onto guilt like a vice regardless. And it can happen regardless of the rational part of the brain knowing that you didn't do anything wrong.
I have the same type of problem. The one thing that's finally helped a little bit is allowing myself to feel the guilt (and all the emotions surrounding it) fully. Normally I try to push it down (because I don't actually have anything to feel guilty for), but suppressed emotions continue to live forever, and they will surface in your body and mind in many ways. Allowing myself to feel it gives me room to process the emotion finally.
Easier said than done, of course. You can't just turn the emotions on and off like a light switch, especially because the brain forms protective mechanisms to prevent you from feeling it. I've had some luck with IFS and somatic therapies.
I read your original post and almost every reasonable person would have paused, but then have written it off as dark humor by someone they didn't know that well.
The only reason you might think there were "signs" you should have caught now is because of what happened but no one could have known in advance.
From a total Internet stranger, give yourself some grace. Or what I have also heard: Judge yourself the way you would judge a good friend in the same situation. We often judge ourselves super harshly!!
> The only reason you might think there were "signs" you should have caught now is because of what happened but no one could have known in advance.
Not quite that simple. I remember sitting in my bed that night, wrestling with whether or not I should call the police or something, and I explicitly chose to do nothing because I didn't want him to think I was weird.
Maybe my mind is blowing it up worse than it was, but that's how I remember it.
One thing to also consider: generally speaking you likely had no chance in convincing him or saving him. It’s awful to feel powerless. I recently had a somewhat similar situation with a friend. I knew he was struggling. I was going to reach out to him the day he was found dead. It was under somewhat strange circumstances so it took a couple of months to get the report back on what the authorities thought happened, which turned out to be a spontaneous health issue and not any deliberate act. But when a healthy man in his 20s is found dead you rarely think “brain aneurysm” so I and other people in his life struggled to make sense of what happened.
One of the more helpful things I was told was that there is nothing you can do if someone is determined to end their life. No intervention, no amount of reaching out, nothing. And that is a powerless place to be but it also means that you not calling the police the night your acquaintance died is likely not the deciding factor in this case.
Find a way to forgive yourself. Talk about your experience. To friends, to strangers, to a therapist. EMDR is great, from what I hear but even talk therapy is a really good place to start processing. I hope you find a way out of this, one internet stranger to another.
> Maybe my mind is blowing it up worse than it was, but that's how I remember it.
This is important actually - human memory is much more fragile than most people realise; we can and regularly do invent entire episodes in our heads, to retroactively explain some fact we have later come to know, or to fit some other thing that we have misremembered.
It's entirely possible that it didn't go down exactly as you remember, but rather your feelings are sharpening the memory and exaggerating your perceived misstep.
Put it this way: the next time life puts a similar decision before you, would you still "fail"? If you believe in life teaching you lessons, one way to frame it is to look past how you feel and look at the actions/decisions concerning other people you've made since then. Are they the same decisions/actions you would have made before? Or did that one particular interaction manage to change your behavior?
I don’t know you personally, so what I say may not be relevant, but these sentences stood out to me:
> I feel guilty because I noticed signs of someone who was suicidal, and explicitly chose to not do anything.
> It feels like the universe was giving me a character test, and it feels like I failed it.
So why not choose to do something different now?
Perhaps why you feel enduringly bad is because those events disrupted your self-narrative and that never recovered. Why not create facts that support a new narrative about how failing then led to you being a better person now? — eg, volunteering.
To have a purpose and to give meaning to things are important parts of how we, as humans, process such events. At least, according to Frankl.
> So why not choose to do something different now?
I mean, sure, I haven't really had the same level of "moral character test" since then, I would like to think I'd do better now, but it's of course impossible to say.
> Why not create facts that support a new narrative about how failing then led to you being a better person now? — eg, volunteering.
I tried teaching for a few semesters primarily for emotional satisfaction reasons, and that had its moments, though that also made me realize that I am have a lot of emotional baggage that I need to work through.
At this point I have been just trying to keep myself busy with personal projects and diving deep into useless computer science theory. Fortunately, I never got into drinking or doing drugs, so all things considered reading used textbooks isn't the worst vice.
Many years ago, when I was a very young man, out late one night walking home from the bar, I happened upon a man standing outside the railing of the bridge I was crossing.
Without really thinking about it, I stopped, asked him if he needed help, tried to get him talking. He did talk to me for a while, but when I looked away to try and get a passing car to call for some help, he jumped.
I told my coworkers about it the next day, and it just seemed to make them uncomfortable. I didn't feel quite right about what had happened, but I wasn't sure why.
I had had a pretty crappy youth, my mom died when I was ten years old, and that was followed by a solid decade of rough times. I was no stranger to serious depression and had, by then, consciously decided I would not kill myself, after giving it serious thought.
I called a close friend of mine and told him the story. He had also lost his mother young. He just asked me one question and I immediately understood. He asked "Why did you stop?"
I myself had decided not to take my own life, but I believed I had the right to do so. Here I was, insinuating myself into a most intense and private moment this stranger to me was having. I would not have wanted that for myself.
I don't regret stopping that night. I would however, do things differently should it happen again.
I realize that some words on your screen are unlikely to make you feel much better about it, but I hope you do.
Now the shitball who yelled "jump" out of his window as he drove by, I hope that asshole is wracked with guilt still, twenty-five years later. Probably not though, feeling bad, like you have been, is the sign of a good person.
> Yeah I know, that's not really why I feel guilty, at least not exactly. I feel guilty because I noticed signs of someone who was suicidal, and explicitly chose to not do anything. Even if nothing would have changed, I still think I should have tried to do something, even if it was futile.
I understand; I have some similar regrets although perhaps not on the same scale. You held yourself to a certain standard, so you're disappointed in yourself that you didn't reach it.
I suppose this is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path - in theory we all know how we want to react in such a situation but when the time comes, the reality is often not exactly what we imagined and so we are still unprepared and make a choice that we come to regret. I think it's like any disaster - you'll get it wrong the first few times, no matter how prepared you think you are.
Thin consolation I know; like I said, I hope you can come to terms with it.
We all fuck things up. Life is really hard and complicated.
It wasn’t a character test. That’s a narrative that you are telling yourself. It was a thing that happened. In the past. Same thing with “it shouldn’t take 3 years to get over this”. Says who? It takes what it takes.
Our life is a garden, we can only tend it as best we can. The plants grow how they grow.
Let yourself grieve as you let go of old narratives and rediscover yourself and your life in each moment.
For me, narratives like this were an attempt at being a “good person” who “deserved to be loved”. I’ve slowly and painfully learned that isn’t how it works. We are all worthy of love. Love isn’t earned, it is a gift that we give and receive. I’m learning how to receive it, most importantly from myself. It’s the hardest and most beautiful thing.
I offer these words in the hope that they are helpful and to share things I’ve learned. Take them if they are, forget them if they are not.
Sending love and wishing you the best. I’ve been there. It’s hard. But time will pass, things will change, and it gets better.
> "I mean, I realize that no good comes from feeling bad about myself over it"
I have listened to a lot of Dr David Burns' podcasts[1] (and recommend them) and there is a relevant part here which I will try to explain enough to tempt you to look at it more, in the hope it helps[2]. He observed that patients came asking him to make their bad feelings go away but the more he tried, the more they held onto the bad feelings ever tighter. After years of this, he came to understand that there is good which comes from feeling bad and helping the patient see it makes them realise they don't want to get rid of the bad feelings after all, only tone down the intensity.
The crux is: what kind of person would notice someone feeling suicidal and do nothing and learn the person suicided and then not feel bad or even feel good? Someone with no compassion who doesn't care about other people's suffering, someone with no moral compass, someone who takes no responsibility, someone who doesn't value living over dying, someone who thinks their actions in the world are meaningless, someone with no agency who needs other people to solve everything for them, someone who holds themselves to very low standards, someone selfish who doesn't want to help other people, someone cruel, etc. etc. Some of these things may resonate with you and those reveal things you value and like about yourself:
- feeling guilty shows I care about other people suffering. ("is that important to you?")
- regretting my choice to do nothing shows I am introspective, reflective, striving to do better. ("is that something you value?")
- wishing I had tried shows I value being helpful instead of selfish. ("and do you value that?")
- feeling that it's a bit my fault shows I want to take responsibility for my behaviour and don't shirk it and seek to blame everyone else. ("is that a trait you respect in others and want in yourself?")
- etc. for each of those things (and more).
OK if you can magically stop feeling bad at the push of a button, but the monkeypaw cost is that you become the uncaring, nihilistic, selfish, lazy, ignorer-of-suffering, who never reflects, lives on autopilot, never wants to do better... do you push the button? After finding some positive sides of your specific feelings which are things you specifically care about, you stop wanting to get rid of the feelings and grok that the good which comes from negative feelings is them protecting traits you value and want to keep[3]. Having negative feelings is not the problem, having them dialled up to 11 is the problem. You want to keep the feelings around as the guiding angel on your shoulder, just less intense. More of Dr Burns' work is on the therapy methods to make that change and dial the intensity down to a level you think would be a reminder, a guide, not a tormentor, but the insight in seeing principles you really do value hiding in the silver lining is sometimes enough to relax the feelings by itself.
> "It feels like the universe was giving me a character test, and it feels like I failed it. I would like to think that when push comes to shove, I'd do the right thing, at least in regards to someone's life being on the line, but I guess at some fundamental level that's simply not true, or at least it wasn't in 2021."
We aren't born perfect, and then fail the tests so the universe can laugh at us failing. We are born sinners and the test-driven-development helps us develop. It wasn't true in 2021 and the bad feeling is trying to be an adjustement which makes it more likely to be true from then on, but stuck on hard-lock. You're wishing to get rid of the bad feeling, the more you push it away the more it gets louder to try and make you hear it. Be guided by it, agree with it, then it's job is done and it can quieten down.
Yes, one of the things that often gets overlooked about aging is that if you live long enough everyone you knew, and knew you, from certain eras of your life are gone... and that tends to make your life more ephemeral. Even the settings of your life are slowly removed, be it the house you grew up in, schools you attended, parks and other areas you played in with friends, businesses, styles, products, and technologies. One day you may find yourself looking around and finding nothing and no one that anchors you to the present.
This inevitability is something you should stave off as long as possible. Meet new people, add new experiences, learn new things while avoiding the siren call of nostalgia and the comfort of limiting yourself to the familiar.
Oh no. Am 32 and I really like the comfort of familiar. I've lived a hell of a life in my 20s, spanning multiple countries and continents, and now feel like I've lived many lifetimes worth of life, and am really loving the peace and quiet I now have.
I’m sorry to hear that. And you’re right, the likelihood approaches 1 as we get older. And that’s if we’re lucky!
Don’t be too hard on yourself. Those who have experienced loss understand that sometimes we have to step back from things, life, our careers. It’s ok to do it. It’s your life, and the one of the greatest joys of life is: you get to choose how to live it.
I had a friend die by suicide. Shortly after I met him for the first time IRL. It messed me up.
I’m sure you’ve heard it before but for the gallery, there’s the “in the moment” suicides where the thought comes and people act on it. If anyone feels that way, please call a hotline, it really is just a temporary feeling that will pass. Then there’s the “sick for a long time.” My therapist described this group as having an unhealthy brain. They’re taking in inputs like normal, but producing harmful urges. That sickness isn’t a thing others can counter or take on for themselves. There’s professional help if you (the reader) are feeling like this constantly. But like all sicknesses sometimes even the best treatments aren’t enough. (Therefore we should not blame ourselves for what we could have done differently).
Knowing that still doesn’t make it better, but it makes it lighter. For me, anyway.
In my opinion, there’s also a third (and certainly controversial) option: suicide is the ultimate expression of freedom, self actualization, and human dignity. I don’t plan to kill myself in the foreseeable future, but the thought that I could gives me hope, power, and removes any fear from my life. A friend of mine is 94 and lives in constant, non-treatable pain, and the thought that she can end her life when she decides to do so makes things bearable for her.
I know that this ultimate freedom is also ultimate selfishness, because the loss is felt by your close ones, not you. But this makes me perhaps an asshole, but not sick.
The idea that something is fundamentally wrong with your brain when you do it is very naïve. Despair exists and the problems aren't always "just in your head".
Over the past decade I've come to the conclusion that there is no healing from some things. There will remain a pit in one's soul where something was torn out of it, and the only thing to do is build past it. Reroute around the damage.
I was someone's last phone call. I lost her when I was 16.
it's unfortunate, and it's so bad a feeling like that eroding someone just because they're kind or emphatetic.
which is why I feel like I'm slowly becoming assholes because it's hard to have that kind of emphatetic feeling while still being sane in nowadays world. It's kinda sad that to have a healthy mental someone need to be less emphatetic.
I resonate with what you say, but try to think of it differently: if you are able to take better care of yourself, even if that feels like in an egotistical fashion, you will have more energy for empathy. smaller slice of a bigger pie.
Fuck. Reading the original post on Something Awful, then your experience in 2021 in the days leading up, and then this all these years later... it's just harrowing. I'm so sorry.
But the fact that you're still here, still processing, still reaching out, means something. You're not a worse person. You're a person who went through something deeply painful, and that pain doesn't define your entire story.
Things happen and you adapt to survive it. And survival mode isn't made to make you happy, to become more generous or to expect more loyalty. And once your worldview changes for a pessimistic one, it'll taint everything around you (especially the new interactions with people)
Yes, some people change to be better: and that means (and I say it painfully) that many of them were the ones that caused unnecessary pain in others.
The other posts on her substack are also worth reading (and the earlier ones from his perspective) - I read through a bunch of them last August when one was posted. A tragic story well told, something that waits for all of us.
My son had cancer during COVID, though he was fortunate enough to beat it into remission (with the help of a huge care team).
I was active duty military, and he is also non-verbal and autistic.
The things she talks about, how focused she was and how hard it is to do any of that now, I've been experiencing exactly the same things. I find it hard to do anything, put anything together, etc. after 3 years of managing his care closely, being at his bedside all hours, having to scream at nurses to call away a code because he couldn't breathe (anaphylaxis), and a ton of other things. All of this while working 50+ hours a week, including remotely from his bedside.
It's like I burnt out that part of me. Maybe I'm slowly healing? But I don't feel like it. I get minutes or hours when I can hit that stride again and it's absolutely terrifying to realize that I can no longer keep it up.
I don't know that this comment adds anything to her story. I just felt like I understood her on a level that's hard to communicate and had the urge to share that.
COVID coincided with my daughter being born, my parents dying unexpectedly and my partner having complete mental breakdown all while I was working a very stressful job with long hours and high stakes. Years have passed and I still feel like the battered husk of the person I was. I have good days and bad days but I'm slowly coming to accept I won't ever feel the confidence, the capability or the boundless reserves of energy, love and patience I took for granted again.
Jeez, this resonates with me so much. In 2019 I was constantly on the upswing. But in 2020, it's been an intensely downward spiral since. I was under so much stress from a 60hr/wk job, isolated during covid with a partner who turned physically abusive and having constant mental breakdowns, on top of trying to endure it all for a once in a lifetime housing opportunity, and then both of my parents ended up hospitalized in the ER from covid... I remember feeling at the time that my mental gears were breaking and doing permanent damage. Those 6 months felt like such a short time that fundamentally changed me from a cheery person to permanently somber.
I quit my job in 2021, physically incapable of continuing and wanting to end it all, thinking if I just make it through each month it'll eventually get better and it never has. It only got worse like the universe kept ratcheting up the difficulty. My abusive partner only got more abusive as I didn't have a job (but paid all our bills) and couldn't muster any energy towards relationship milestones as the abuse and depression crippled me. Years of enduring this only led to now being abandoned and feeling worse than ever, like there is no upside worth the calamitous downsides in life.
One thing I dont get with similar stories - you felt things are seemingly going to shit in relationship yet no reaction, no quitting but maybe even double down? Abusive people will be abusive with no easy fix in sight, sucking it up for some real estate opportunity is a sure recipe for disaster and misery and no money gained will ever compensate for that. Thats one of 101 of life, there shouldnt be a need to really walk through it to confirm this. Kids do complicate this massively but you dont mention them.
Same for work it seems, working on edge of what you can handle means any little bad thing happening on top can send you over and down the spiral of breakdown.
I dont want to bash anybody and its more for others who will one day experience similar things - listen to your body, its telling you tons of things, and not for just fun. Its your best buddy so dont neglect it, there is no replacement and it really gets weaker with age, sooner than you would like.
I see a lot of high performers ending up similarly - very narrow focus on one brilliance ie work, but deep neglect of the rest. Never a nice story at the end. Nobody will be happy when dying from how much they worked or which investments worked out. If one really has to, set clear short term goals for when to stop it and have a bit of discipline (ie dont get used to better lifestyle that more money brings requiring you to continue).
You will hear success stories of those who got out and made themselves better. You won't hear the numerous stories of those who broke up, realized they're hyperdependent on a romantic relationship and don't have the strength to do without - or those who break up but end up with another abusive partner.
I doubt there is good statistics or research on this, but anecdotally, it doesn't seem uncommon.
You also mention "neglect of rest", and in relationships you might also say neglect of the self - but often it's not explicit neglect, instead it's not even being used to or knowing how to recognize or fulfil those needs. As an example, after my tinnitus got worse, rest is simply so hard to achieve that it doesn't matter if I make it my top priority. People saying I need to rest more obviously annoys me, and claiming I'm neglecting rest would be borderline disrespectful.
Not comparing tinnitus and workaholism, just making a general statement about the use of "neglect" here.
> you felt things are seemingly going to shit in relationship yet no reaction, no quitting but maybe even double down? Abusive people will be abusive with no easy fix in sight
I loved them so much that constantly fighting and being abused was still better than their absence now. I believed we would both turn things around, but it only got worse every few months. Being in this situation felt like a 90/100 misery scale, that I couldn't bear, and leaving would be asking me to volunteer for 95/100
> Same for work it seems, working on edge of what you can handle means any little bad thing happening on top can send you over and down the spiral of breakdown.
Also thought it would be temporary and not do permanent damage. In the midst of crisis, I'm thinking "just get through this month, it will get better" and then before you know it years have went by and all those months accumulated their toll
Every single person who winds up in that situation has said or thought exactly that about someone else. There’s a reason all this advice is a cliche, and there’s a reason we have to keep giving it, and just consider yourself lucky that you still don’t understand why that is. It’s harder to be human than it seems.
Sometimes, you just have to walk out on it all. Pack a go-back, open the door and go. You are not the domain of some vampire of suck to park their life in. You can just leave them and start over. Relationships should not a trap door function.
I feel like I'm constantly mourning who I used to be, like it was a different person entirely and there's no getting that level of empathy or patience back again.
I’m still working on it, not as extreme as some of these cases here it feels quite embarrassing to admit how much I mourn for my old life (changed country, became a father, zero social circle etc).
Zen practice and fitness have made an astronomically large improvement for me, but I guess everyone has to find that which helps them accept their current situation.
I think economic factors and the health of society at large are one of the largest parts of this. I'm young and didn't get to grow up in an innocent time, and anyone older than me seems worse off. The only way I think I can make things work is to make drastic life choices like relocation, and live pretty alternative lifestyles like off grid for economic security.
I'm always wondering where the interesting people went, but maybe they became just like everyone else.
I believe you are right about the larger factors shaping the individual experience.
And since you mention that you are young, just to let you know: when "celebrating" the latest new years eve, all guests present (40 to 50yo) agreed that the main source of hope for the near future was the early disillusionment of younger generations. More power to you! :)
While I know this thread is self-selecting, it’s amazing how many folks share similar stories of how they feel burnt out in life since 2020.
I fear we’ve yet to hit rock bottom and more societal strife is impending, both in America and elsewhere. But like you, I agree there is some hope that those just starting out will rebuild something better from the ashes of it when it’s all over.
As a 35-year old though I worry I’ll be too old to truly reap the benefits. Although elder millennials, whose formative adult years were defined by the Great Recession and Gen Z, who had them defined by COVID, might have it even worse.
When my grandmother was alive, she would sometimes say things that stuck in my memory. One of the things she told me was that the only thing which really improved since she was young was medicine. She said that while a lot of technologies improved in a scientific sense, it wasn't a net positive because some of the hurdles which technology helped to remove were part of what made life enjoyable, amusing and meaningful.
It think the term "good old days" is not some delusion of the aging mind as the media keeps trying to convince us. As I've watched things getting worse during my own life, I've been getting increasingly confident that things really were better in those old days. I mean, even the kinds of people who existed; they were simpler people, happier people. They lived lives of mystery and serendipity.
Now you basically have to be rich to be happy and you usually have to do bad things to be rich... So it's difficult to find happiness nowadays. IMO, success in life is being both rich and also having a clean conscience; then you can have everything you need, yet still have the ability to look people in the eyes and mean what you say when you speak.
I'm in the same boat alienated by a 30+ year partner that won't even discuss the issues.
After 9 months what I have realized is that my 30+ year partner was not a good fit for me. The mental space cleared by not worrying about my ex-partner's contentless has feared up most of my brain power.
What I realize now is that my partner was wasting many of my brain cycles that are now freed up. I actually have fallen back into a brain space that feels like my early college graduate brain. The brain I had before I took responsibility for my partner's happiness.
I just want to add my voice to say that my life completely disintegrated a few years ago. I lost almost everything, including my partner of over a decade, and reached a point where I didn't even have the motivation to wash or feed myself... because, what was the point? I was expending energy just to continue a pointless, joyless, struggle.
Battered husk is the best description I can think of for how I felt.
It took a while, but I was extremely lucky to find the right combination of therapy, SSRIs, and life changes to drag myself out of the hole. I now have a stable job doing something that sparks my interests and makes a meaningful contribution, and my love of life has returned. I still have the occasional day where it feels like I start to backslide, but they are getting rarer.
I want to reassure anyone who feels tired, burnt-out, and hopeless, that things can and do get better.
Similar here. Covid happened, lost my relationship of 15 years, had a total mental breakdown, lost my job, lost 20Kg, substance abuse, spent all my savings, struggle to pay bills. Lost my dad 2 months ago. Unemployed for a year now. I'll never be able to get back to where I was professionally. Feel dumb, confused and my memory sucks. Three shitty ass years. Medicated.
Slowly starting to see some light. My two young kids get me through this, they are with me every other week and give purpose to my life, they are best thing ever.
I hear you too. Don't be scared to ask for professional help. Meds can make a difference.
Seeing people's testimonials made me feel better so I thought I'd post mine.
Try and get sunlight on your retina 20 min 3 days a week. It can be through your eyelids but not through glass or glasses. That vitamin C and one of the B vitamins all help load the pathways to make serotonin. It won't magically fix your life but it can also help bootstrap your outlook. It can be grounding to watch the sun shift over the seasons. Best wishes.
Something you're never told when you're young is that life WILL take things from you, will never return them, and you'll never be the same.
You don't know how much, when, how or why, but it will happen. I consider someone blessed if they make it to middle-age largely "intact."
When you're young and unencumbered and largely undamaged you need to use that time in any way you can; inevitably you'll end up "walking wounded" one way or another--less than you were--unable to return to who you were before whatever(s) happened.
When I was young I'd encounter older men that struck me as "defeated", tired, incurious, dismissive, and I'd never understood why until the last ~half decade or so of my life.
I really think human "life" and vitality is something that does get "spent", often against your will.
I don't want to invalidate your feelings but I've had the opposite experience. I've been chronically depressed and have had multiple stays in psych wards but I'm finally starting to heal. I'm able to experience this pure joy that I haven't felt since I was a little kid. My life is still very difficult but I haven't felt this alive since elementary school.
Both can be true. I have been integrating a lot of different sides of myself and the long work of therapy is finally starting to coalesce into a real results.
But, also, a part of me died during our attempts to have another kid. At some point it just broke me in that dimension. I have doubts that it can be fully healed. It is grief, and it demands space and an outlet sometimes. And it hurts from time to time. It's no longer debilitating, but it is still there.
I think it's obvious. Everyone should treat anyone with empathy respect patience understanding and love. Most of all love.
That level of understanding between you and her should be universally shared between everything that is living. This way, support can always be found.
I wish you and your family all the best. The same goes for Bess, as I told her many times. I wish I could give you a hug, make you feel protected and capable, as the hero that you are.
I know nothing of the difficulties you nor the OP face, but
> It's like I burnt out that part of me. Maybe I'm slowly healing? But I don't feel like it.
You've probably heard it, but maybe to help remind, I just wanted to say - It's okay to be burnt out and do little or nothing. I believe it's the minimum requirement to healing and it _will_ take years maybe even a decade. I was cheated on and that affected me for 2 years and that's trivial to the road you walk.
I was fortunate enough to be in a place where I could "retire" the month after he rang the bell.
I've been doing my own thing for close to two years now, trying to heal.
Maybe I will someday. Until then, I somehow manage to keep up with his (still elevated) needs and try to be a good husband and father to my other child.
The sheer intensity of being in constant survival mode for someone you love, especially in such high-stakes moments, doesn't just fade once the crisis is over. It leaves something behind, or maybe takes something away. I don't know if healing looks like "going back to who we were" or if it's more about figuring out who we are now, with everything we've carried
It is also important to realize that the past does not exist, not really. You get to decide, every day, who you are. It is the simplest and hardest thing.
Throwaway: when my daughter was 4, she took a bath. My wife was in the living room doing laundry, literally 5 steps away. At that point, my daughter had just finished swimming class 3 months before. I was at work. When she called "mum!", my wife said: "Coming" and folded one final shirt. When she then entered the bathroom, my daughter floated in the tub, face down. No breathing, no sign of life anymore. My wife revived here on the floor of our living room while calling 911 and crying for help.
She had a simple fever cramp (her second) in the tub and nearly drowned because of it.
This was roughly a year ago. I remember walking out of the building at work in trance, looking for a cab, after I got the call, thinking my daughter was dead. She was back to normal (apart from the nasty infection that lead to the fever cramp) on the next day. Buy my wife and I have never been the same since. I entered the apartment 2 days later, and the tub was still filled with water and some of my daughters hair, and there was blood on the living room floor because the medics gave her sedatives and she kicked against the syringe. While cleaning my daughter's blood from the floor, I got the distinct feeling that she really died and that I was just in a very long dream in which she survived, and that I would wake up very soon to a world of sorrow. That feeling has never left me. It may explain why most things now feel completely irrelevant to me, including work.
We quickly bought a house 6 months later and left the apartment. I now realize that this was mostly motivated by the fact that we couldn't stand the look of the bathtub anymore. It was also because we simply weren't afraid anymore of the debt, of the additional work, of moving. Fear is something that only remains a numb feeling after such an experience.
She is 5 now. The worst part is that she fully remembers. A few weeks ago, she freely and cheerfully explained in daycare that she once was bathing and then cried "mum" and then "fell asleep under water". At dinner a few months ago, she also explained that to us and then laughed and mentioned that "mum must've thought I am a mermaid" and happily continued eating. It crushes me just thinking of it.
If my wife had folded 2 or 3 shirts before entering the bathroom, my daughter would be dead now. If my daughter hadn't yelled "mum!" the second the fever cramp started, of if she would've yelled it under water, she would also be dead now. In this probabilistic decision tree, the leaf where my daughter survives has a probability that is negligibly small. To my very great surprise, I have found that this inevitably leads to religion. I have never been religious before, but I have indeed found great relief in prayer and sitting around in empty churches.
Life to us is now nothing but walking on a thin crust of ice, which spans over an infinite hell of fire, horror and torture. At any time, without warning, the ice may break.
Your daughter has taken it all better than you. We're all a moment away from death - on the road all it would take would be one yank on the steering wheel at the wrong time - even by some other driver.
I really hope you guys are getting propper help, this state of being must be horrible, especially since nothing happened in the end. Nothing happened because your wife after all made sure to not be too far away and was alert enough to hear her call. We're all 2 minutes away from death should we somehow stop breathing, best we can do is to minimize risk.
Me and my wife had a horrible experience ourselves where our 2 year old daughters best friend(also 2 years old) drowned in their family swimming pool after figuring out how to open the door herself. I know this wasn't nearly as close to heart as the other stories in this post, but receiving that text on a Saturday evening was super tough and me and my partner was crushed for months after it happened. It's now been 10 months and we rarely think about it anymore although we did end up in a house WITHOUT a swimming pool, so in a way it's still with us.
One of my childhood friend lost his little brother in a similar accident. 25 years later, I have a similar phobia of private swimming pools, ponds or any unsupervised water surface. I cannot see a private swimming pool and not think about him. He was a happy toddler, just like my kids today.
Your description of being in a trance after you found out is eerily similar to how I felt when I got the message that I needed to get to the hospital and start signing paperwork because my son had cancer.
My life has a stark demarcation of before and after that, and sometimes it feels like nothing is quite real since.
Strangely, I feel that my wife was able to come to terms with this demarcation much more quickly than I, although she was obviously much more traumatized than me in the time immediately after the event. (I quickly talked to her on the phone when she was in the ambulance, she was mostly incoherent and it was impossible to even get the information out of her whether our daughter was dead). I think this is mainly because it was entirely and only her who saved her life. She took control of the entire situation just seconds after it collapsed on her, and successfully turned it around completely by herself. I, on the other hand, was forced to be completely passive for nearly 2 hours, alone, with incomplete information, and with periods in which I thought I had lost my daughter. It was me who had a breakdown in the night after the event, in a dark hospital room, and it was again my wife who handled that situation.
This terrifies me. My mom died when of cancer I was 11, and I am much more anxious about things happening to my kids than my wife is.
One day my wife said she was going to give our 4 year old daughter a bath, then I find my daughter by herself in the bath and my wife all the way across the house in the bedroom. I asked “Why aren’t you watching her?” The reply, “She’s fine. She knows how to swim and the water isn’t even that deep.”
I work remotely in the upstairs bedroom and will occasionally come down for water. Half the time I find my one year old eating alone in his high chair in the kitchen, with my wife doing something in the bedroom. “Where are you? What if he chokes?” “You don’t trust me. He’s fine. I can hear him from the bedroom.”
My wife will get in road rage incidents. People flip her off and yell threats at her as she slingshots through traffic with our little kids in the back seat. “You’re going to crash driving like that.” “Stop telling me how to drive.” Someone pretended to pull a gun out on her after she swore at them. “You’re going to get shot.” “No I’m not. I can tell if any of those people would have a gun.”
She also has severe ADHD. Our daughter got under the sink when she was two and ate half a dishwasher detergent pod before my wife noticed and called poison control. Another day when my daughter was two my wife forgot to shut the gate at the bottom of the stairs when she came upstairs to talk to me during the workday. Suddenly I hear a series of thuds and cries. Our little girl had fallen down the flight of stairs after trying to follow my wife without her noticing. Same thing happened to my 1 year old son under the watch of my wife’s mother.
I’m so scared that one day I’m going to get a call about something horrible that has happened to my kids either because of my wife’s inattention or anger issues.
Those don't sound like unreasonable concerns at all. Wish you the best.
There's something I wanted to say reading this whole thread. I just hope it does not come off as lecturing or preaching. It's this: Don't feel bad about things that there is no way for you to change. Just do your very best about the things you can. Nobody can ask more of anyone.
> I got the distinct feeling that she really died and that I was just in a very long dream in which she survived, and that I would wake up very soon to a world of sorrow.
This is how I've felt every time a friend has tried and failed to commit suicide. I'm so sorry.
As a child aged five, I broke through the ice and fell into a pond that had frozen over. The Kindergarten teacher was both alert and quick thinking enough to get me out fast. I never remembered more of the event that a) I wore a velvety-black-colored coat made from corduroy and b) that I woke up in the ambulance soggy wet as was the teacher next to me.
The rest of that event - why I walked away from the group, whether I was called back or just lucky, or even what I thought or felt when I went into the water - all gone. Can't remember. Only that afterwards, it felt odd how panicy mum was, and that she immediately insisted on swimming lessons.
So when I was five, this was an experience like "any" - How was I supposed to understand that I had a close brush with death, or what that even meant ?
(I wish your daughter a long and happy life, and may neither her nor anyone have to experience the feelings that you did, or my mum)
Thank you for realizing what's important. Protect those you love, and see them. I'm glad your daughter is OK, that seems like such a scary ordeal. What you have to do now is find love and interest in the little things again so that you can teach her to do the same. Teach her to trust that the ice won't always break.
My grandfather ran me over when I was 6 and nearly killed me. When he ostensibly realized what happened, he took his sweet time to exit the vehicle while it was pinning me down, slowly get out, stare at me, and then made sure to run over me again while moving the vehicle. The only two things that saved me was that he was driving a light pickup truck, and my bike folded around my chest and neck and prevented the wheel of the truck from crushing them. I will never know if he saw me and ran over me intentionally or not, but I was in plain view waiting for the bus and he never expressed any emotion at any point over what happened.
I was crying and shaken up and traumatized, but he made sure I still got on that bus without so much as a quick medical checkup. I felt very numb and isolated for a long time after that. No one around seemed to understand that I'd just experienced a near-death experience. I also didn't receive a new bike for years, seemingly out of spite.
While at a stop sign, a car veered off the crossing street into my car at about 40 mph. My pregnant wife and 1 year old were in the back seat. Our car was destroyed and the other guy drove off, never to be found.
No permanent injuries on our end, but what you said about walking on a thin crust of ice rings true. And feeling like there's another reality where things didn't turn out OK. All the best to you, I am glad your daughter is OK.
It’s called depression and when it happens because of a situation in your life that you have limited control over it can be very difficult to recover. Get professional help if you haven’t. It is hard. Been there.
Time. Focused effort. For me my happiness set point is decent. It takes work to get out of the hole though. No one thing. Exercise. Diet. Forcing myself to do things I know I enjoy. It can feel hollow, but it comes back. Lots of meditation, stoicism, cognitive behavioral therapy. Recognize the negative thought pattern loops early, combatting them, reminding yourself what they are.
We live the life of the Servant. We used to define ourselves by our profession, now we define ourselves as "special needs parent". This is a step closer to actually being more human. How trivial our lives were before, how we wasted so many hours on shit that didn't matter!
My wife died of ovarian cancer in February of 2020, right as covid started.
It felt like I was running on adrenaline and cortisol for two years. Scrambling to find anything to help, steadily applying the steel tip of my proverbial boot to the backside of the healthcare industry, doing home IVs, changing ostomy bags, making sure meds were straight, trying to gently urge her to eat something at all, deep diving into the pits and snares of clinical trials, looking at adjunct therapies and arguing with doctors about our right to do those, growing to an ambient, everpresent rage over time.
When she passed, it all went silent, and then the world shut down.
I still feel like my brain has changed. It's difficult to put my finger on how.
In retrospect a lot of the time I spent trying to find options and understand the disease and its treatment would have been much better spent tending to the emotional needs of my family. I should have accepted much earlier that it was over and just prepared for that inevitability rather than clawing and scratching for options right until the end. I just didn't know how to do it.
I’m so sorry for your loss. Something did change, and i think it’s good you feel that. Someone I used to work with, their wife was a professor at Rochester university and her research was around happiness. She would tell me that our baseline happiness in life is virtually constant (on large timescales, we all have good/bad days etc), there’s not much we can do to alter it in adulthood to shift it. There were a few exceptions, loss of a child, partner or critical illness.
I’m not sure what comes next but really hope that energy and happiness finds its way back to you with time.
>Someone I used to work with, their wife was a professor at Rochester university and her research was around happiness. She would tell me that our baseline happiness in life is virtually constant (on large timescales, we all have good/bad days etc), there’s not much we can do to alter it in adulthood to shift it.
If you're someone who struggles with chronic depression this statement is extremely demoralizing. But it's also hearsay -- you're a stranger on the internet, so you want me to believe based on a stranger's colleague's wife's alleged research, that depression cannot be effectively treated?
If you want to share that researcher's work, provide a link. Keep your rumors, suppositions, and lay-person's doomer psychology to yourself, unless you are planning to make a post with direct citations that is in effect nothing like the comment you did leave.
People's lives depend on this. You can't just post "if you have depression you'll never be able to change it" cavalierly as though you are an expert and your post has no consequences.
Someone is going to read your supposition, your rumor, believe it, and despair.
Fully agree. And even if there was a legitimate study, it wouldn't be dispositive. I had horrible anxiety and depression for most of my adult life. I believed I would never be a happy person, and that I would always be tormented by my mental illness.
I finally found treatment that worked for me in the pandemic (Ketamine assisted psychotherapy), and it was life changing. It has been 2.5 years since I stopped treatment and I'm 10x happier. I wake up every day happy and curious about what the day will bring.
This is a well known concept called the "Hedonic Treadmill", which exists since the 70ies, not "doomer psychology". It also does not say treating depression is not possible. Depression is a disease.
My wife has had anxiety and depression her whole life. I have been carefree and happy all of mine. I've been bullied at school, broke to the point of hunger after college in the 90s, and lost my sister to ovarian cancer 5 years ago. And aside from dealing with "in the moment" problems, my brain is always in freewheeling happy mode. Whereas my wife, no matter how "right" her day went, tens to be negative and beat herself up. It's how we're wired. She did therapy and she thinks that 90% of it is bullshit.
However, in the last few years she said that her "negative voices" (not actually schizophrenia, but her own nagging, disrespectful, negative narration) have gotten under control through CBT. She says it's something she needs to work at daily, though, because her brain seems to be wired that way. And she's controlling it and staying healthy without any meds.
So while I think there's something in that anecdote I don't think it means that you can't have a good life.
The entire point of clinical depression is that it's not environmental, it's intrinsic. Yes, this means it won't change - that's why antidepressants exist. It's why you should see a therapist for it, and should stop listening to people implying you can just eat different or whatever. This knowledge sucks, but you trying to keep that a secret and shaming someone into silence isn't helping.
> The entire point of clinical depression is that it's not environmental, it's intrinsic. Yes, this means it won't change
Wrong. I lost at least a decade of really great years to this belief. It's bullshit. I've made huge strides in my "clinical" depression despite my environment not markedly improving. I did, however, improve myself enough to recognize and stop maladaptive behaviors.
It's hard as hell to change yourself, but you're not immutable.
> I should have accepted much earlier that it was over and just prepared for that inevitability rather than clawing and scratching for options right until the end. I just didn't know how to do it.
And yet with the other choice you might have regretted "not having done everything you could have". That is the curse of those with the ability to actually do something. In many ways, those who do not understand and simply place their faith in doctors are less burdened.
You did what you thought best at the time; that is all you could have done. Nothing you did or did not do was a mistake.
There are no "right" answers when facing mortality. My sympathies for what you went through, and I hope you are doing better.
》 In many ways, those who do not understand and simply place their faith in doctors are less burdened.
This is so true.
I wish I could write a better response but my wife has her periodic pet-scan in 1hr. Those scan always leave me paralyzed with fear of recurrence of the metastatic breast cancer she has. it's probably off topic so sorry internet strangers but writing it brings a little relief.
Thank you, I appreciate it. The 'doing everything I can' aspect is real. I was only in it for two years and it truly gave me a new perspective for folks that are dealing with similar circumstances over a much longer timespan.
> I should have accepted much earlier that it was over and just prepared for that inevitability rather than clawing and scratching for options right until the end.
No way. If you had done that you would have felt even worse for not trying everything you possibly could.
+1 to this, my mom died because of COVID in India 1 months after she left US after visiting me, and I still feel guilty that I didnt insist on getting her the vaccine before she left for India, and then at the time of her death India was locked down so no flights and I wasn't even next to her. It's been 4 years but every so often I think about this. I blame myself less now after some therapy, but If you didn't try all that you could you'd probably feel guilty like me.
It's impossible though. Accepting something like that. If it's your own death I think that maybe you can eventually accept its coming. But if it's your wife? Christ, I'd be searching the earth non stop too.
My sister died of ovarian cancer right at the start of COVID. My big sis, 1 year older. Even though the oncologists said early on that it was extremely aggressive and wasn't responding to treatment, nobody in the family could process it. Oddly, except myself. I live an hour away from them and I think that separation allowed me space to process the inevitable. I tried to be that person who took care of the emotional needs of the family, and my brother in law. But I didn't have a single person to "confide in" because nobody accepted that she was going to die, including her. She had just had a baby a few months before (IVF, and tbh I'm wondering if that process kicked the cancer off). She had to look at her tiny baby and imagine him growing up not knowing her. You could see it in her eyes when she looked at him. Yet she couldn't bring herself to make little recordings, write emails or notes to him for when he's 12 or whatever. That's how much denial she was in - she denied him that sense of what it would be like to have her talk to him.
The first to give up hope was her husband actually. I suppose because he was closest to the front lines, and saw the toll it took on her, the constant downhill. And the dozens of other things that aren't cancer but are part of the depressing array of events like pleural effusion, blood clots, and the digestive system eventually getting blocked off with tumors. When he finally admitted to me that it was terminal, she had less than two months left.
My lovely wife is sitting across the table from me now wondering what "heavy stuff" I'm typing. I couldn't imagine being able to accept losing her.
I hope your life is recovering.
My brother in law met a lovely woman just over a year ago. She has two kids and he had his one. They make a great family unit and she's good for him. Even in practical ways like taking turns bringing the kids to school or sports, covering for him when he had to work late. My family get along with her too. I know it still hurts him to think about what he lost but he's very much a "get on with life" person, so he gets on.
What I wrote down below is a bit jumbled, but I felt like you describe something I hadn't realized yet. That maybe my brain has changed. And I needed to respond and think about your idea. I hope you are finding a way to deal with it.
This is resonates with me. My father died from cancer a year ago, the bit that survived two treatments was extremely fast moving. I had a business with him, and I spent a year trying to do as much of his job and mine to help him out. But he wanted to work, and I think it was good for him to have forward looking goals.
It feels like every day I am trying to figure out how to make my brain work the way it used to. And almost every day I am trying to decide if we had a bus factor of 1. Fortunately I have family support, and a part time job to keep me busy and bring a bit of money in.
I think about the emotional support and I think we did the best we could have. My dad was clear about listening to the doctors about his options. We spent some time reading about options and researching. But it was clear to all of the immediate family that we lacked the depth of knowledge needed. It was interesting to read about and learn about the techniques. And we were able to get advice from medical family friends. But his team was very good and thoughtful. We also thought the treatments were working. Until a later scan showed a small blip and before we could understand the options and decide he was in the hospital and terminal.
I still feel like I'm moving through the motions of running our business, but not actually doing it. Or something, it is a frustrating feeling that I am trying to fix but maybe I can't. Or maybe it will take years.
You used to be a superhero. And you still are. Remember who you are.
You were drowned in frustration. But now you acknowledge the reality of the present situation, it's time to execute the new accomplishments that will prove your greatness.
thank you for sharing. what you describe is akin to what other survivors of utter helplessness describe. usually we think of "trauma" as surviving naked angst, fear for our life or health, uncontrollable horrific events. and that's also in classic medical definitions. but we're slowly learning how many existential crises of utter helplessness, also proxy-helplessness for a dear loved one, can put our brains into a out-of-place state. If that resonates somehow, the good news is that there are exercises, guided approaches to help the brain reconfigure back into the original state of empowerment and optimism. "Somatic experiencing" is one of them, emdr another one (in the hands of an experienced and trained trauma certified clinician), and there are some more. long story short: there are paths forward.
My wife died suddenly when my son was two years old. He’s almost seven now.
So far, he’s completely fine without her. He claims he has memories of her, but I think he just remembers photos and videos that we’ve watched together. I don’t think he knows what he’s missing.
To your first question, I don’t know. We do celebrate her birthday, light a candle whenever we walk past a church / go into a temple etc. If I’m brutally honest I think it’s more for my own sake than his.
To retain the connection, we look at photos together every week and I tell him stories about her, and their relationship.
I spoke to him just now, and he says that he misses her but is unable to articulate how. Perhaps these ceremonies will grow more important over time, and as he grows older perhaps he will appreciate that we took the time to celebrate her.
I have an adult friend, who lost his mother at a young age too. He tells me that he only really started to miss her once he got older, around 12, and as an adult. He doesn’t remember who she was or why, but he misses the idea of having had family dinners at home every day etc. The dynamic in a household is very different when there is one adult and one child at home, versus two adults to a child.
Yes, but not for the reason that I want a mother figure in the house. Only recently, have I been able to date without comparing any new prospective partners to my late wife. I have yet to meet the right person.
It’s also a very big ask of a new partner for them to step in and fulfil the role of mother to your child.
Fair enough. I feel it's not uncommon for people with children to remarry, but yeah I imagine it has it's own challenges.
I feel like for me it would be a) Wanting someone I have a deep connection with and b) Someone who's interested in children. I feel that keeps it simple.
But yeah, I just think about how much I wouldn't be able to provide my daughter as a male, given I know so little about hair, make up etc. I mean, I'd obviously learn it all, but it would be easier to have someone who was already on that page.
> I think one thing I worry about is my daughter possibly not growing up with a mother. Like how that will affect her.
Don't worry about that! My daughter lost her mother when she was 1.5 years old. It's important to have a sensible female role model. A grandma or an aunt will do just fine.
When my partner died, I read up a bit about the problems children face when being raised by a single father. By far the biggest problem was the father's alcoholism. So I decided not to become an alcoholic (a prospect which actually looked rather enticing at a certain point in time). Also I try to be gentle with myself: it's ok to mess up.
Again, hang in there and best of luck to you and your family!
Throwaway account. I'm fairly open about this, but don't really want it associated for all time with me.
About a year after my marriage split up I went to the marriage of someone close to me. During the ceremony I had severe chest pains and was pretty sure I was having a heart attack. I didn't want to disturb the ceremony (they were exchanging rings!) so I figured I'd wait 5 minutes then get up and call an ambulance.
The pain went away, and I didn't do anything about it for a while. Later I had a panic attack when at a new GF's place and had to leave.
Eventually I went to a therapist, and they pointed out these are symptoms of PTSD and trauma.
Anyway, I'm fine now. But it wasn't until I had the physical symptoms that I believed the impact of these things wasn't just something I could ignore.
Wizard here, that's totally normal. Just life giving you a little nudge to remind you you're not dead! The only way to deal with it is to grit your teeth and clench your butt.
Once you can endure that pain while remaining calm enough to hear Bateman narrate my pain is constant and sharp... in your mind, you'll be "alright".
we are millions of streams that never stop flowing -- but we love to pretend that there's consistency to it. we like to imagine ourselves as a continuous person.
but we're not. we change, moment to moment, forever, endlessly -- it doesn't stop, ever. not when we go to sleep. not when we go through a traumatic event. not when we die.
a stark reminder of our fragility. i hope the author can find peace.
I have yet to have a reason to use this, but I keep it in my pocket until do.
> Stand at the brink of the abyss of despair, and when you see that you cannot bear it anymore, draw back a little and have a cup of tea.
>
> — Elder Sophrony of Essex
It's a quote from the end of Lars Doucet's post, Losing my son.
Sisyphean is the word I’ve come back to a lot myself since my wife took her life on November 6, 2024. Feeling like I’m now trying to live for both of us, grasping at ways of honouring her memory despite the incredible love we had being unable to “save” her, and somehow not at all myself anymore, but having to keep moving forward feels hopeless beyond belief.
I lost my dad suddenly just two months prior, and my grandma shortly before that, but the loss of your partner (and in this manner after she refused help and I watched helplessly as she spiralled in her last year) eclipses any grief or pain I had experienced before or could have even imagined.
But I wanted to show a little appreciation for the OP and others on here sharing their devastating losses. Knowing love inevitably turns into grief but that that is a more universal experience makes me feel a little less alone. Small blessings but at points like these, we take whatever morsels we can get.
Brother, I can't say anything that will make it better, but all I can offer is what gets me through grief that I've been living with for 20 years: They wouldn't want me to carry it like this. They always wanted the best for me, and walking around like a husk, missing them isn't it.
Ah I'm crying. Thank you both, for your honesty. These little bits of stories feel like reserves I hope I never need so badly, but I likely will, and so I'm grateful.
I was 14 when, within months: my mom's dad died, my dad died, my mom was diagnosed with the melanoma that took her 7 years later, a fire took the longtime family home. And she developed trigeminal neuralgia - a 9-10 for pain and she had it on both sides of her face. All of this impacted her. And us. For her part, she carried on with work and managing a family.
Fast forward. Well into my own marriage, my wife spiraled into mental health issues that subjected the kids and I to decades of sabotage, abuse and ceaseless, exhausting catastrophes.
I too learned that when I am hallowed out, I can continue on. When I am beyond my own help, someone else might not be and there might be something I can do. At this point, helping others is pure self preservation.
Thank you. It’s definitely the living definition of hell, a constant panic attack for a past you can’t change, but it’s also only been 3 months and I’m discovering resilience and supports I’m so thankful for.
I also decided to go visit one of our favourite places (Thailand) to get away for a bit, meet up with a friend, do some writing, and make some new memories here. It’s been really hard at points but definitely healing too.
John, I'm a perfect stranger but I send you a big hug and lot of love.
I can only thinly scratch the surface of what you went through with my mind, and it's already the scariest thought I could possibly have in my life.
I sympathize. I won't offer platitudes. I find those don't lessen grief.
My son took his own life on February 1st, 2023. I feel like someone took a huge melon baller and scooped out the middle of my chest. My wife and I had been trying to get him back on his feet for two years at that point. He died quietly about 10 feet from me. The family cat kept trying to get me to open his bedroom door. I kept trying to respect his privacy. I finally took her hint.
He was the best person I knew. I imagined vicariously living a much better life through him. I still feel like a fragment of my former self. He was a sometime contributor here, by the way, under jwmhjwmh.
Anyway, I give my love to everyone here sharing stories of their losses. I find sharing memories of these loved ones is more comforting than platitudes, and certainly more healing than pretending nothing happened.
I can only imagine such a loss based on my own, and from the many conversations I’ve had with my wife’s mum as well, trying to be the best supports we can for each other.
I would describe my wife similarly, it sounds like. Kind, value-driven, cared too much, was the biggest personality in the room but somehow always made people feel seen and heard. But also deeply troubled and hid a lot of it, even from me I’m discovering.
Sending love your way as well. I agree, platitudes or things like “they’re in a better place now” or “looking down on us” make me only feel worse, but genuine compassion does help feel like the weight isn’t on our shoulders alone, even for a little rest.
You're still in the valley. It does seem Sisyphean and it will for ahwile. I went through this in 2021 and it took a few years to get to the point where it doesn't feel hopeless.
You won't be the same person after, but in some ways that's good. Highly recommend grief counseling. Feel free to reach out if you need help from someone who has been through it.
Thank you. I’m definitely still very “in the valley” since it’s only been a few months, but I am in counselling which helps. And I’ve lost close friends to suicide and addiction in the past, so going through those before has helped me not feel quite so lost, at least knowing how to be gentler with myself this time.
There's an unavoidable amount of guilt. I should be remembering them more, I should be honouring them by keeping them in my thoughts, but I can't think about them 24/7 and now I feel guilty that I'm doing them a disservice. The callous answer is life goes on and you need to go on with it. The friendlier answer is you have to give yourself permission to live for yourself, thinking about them only some of the time is still keeping their memory alive. It can help to have a representation, be it a specific day like their birthday you assign to their memory or a physical item. I lost a parent when I was a teenager, it turned my world upside down, I found what helped was having a thing as dedication to them. It let me compartmentalise the emotion to that object and gave me permission to not think about them all the time because they're being remembered by that item existing. It's not easy but does get easier, ultimately just be kind to yourself. It's not a quick process.
Odd, I have the Substack app (on my phone). When I click on the link, I'm sent to the Substack app, which subsequently sends me back to the website, which suggests I open the app, then I open the app, and I see the Substack app without the article.
“A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy” by William Irvine has an entire chapter dedicated to letting go of past trauma and moving forward. The Stoic advice was “fatalism”. The Stoics' advice was “fatalism” in relation to the events that fate deals us. This is in stark contrast to the psychologizing approach of modernity where everything must be turned around and the answer must be found, preferably within the individual.
Here is an excerpt where author William Irvine highlights Marcus Aurelius' thoughts on fate and grief:
> Marcus also advocates taking a fatalistic attitude toward life. To do otherwise is to rebel against nature, and such rebellions are counterproductive, if what we seek is a good life. In particular, if we reject the decrees of fate, Marcus says, we are likely to experience tranquility-disrupting grief, anger, or fear. To avoid this, we must learn to adapt ourselves to the environment into which fate has placed us and do our best to love the people with whom fate has surrounded us. We must learn to welcome whatever falls to our lot and persuade ourselves that whatever happens to us is for the best. Indeed, according to Marcus, a good man will welcome “every experience the looms of fate may weave for him.
Today, when I experience regrets and sadness that I can't control, I think; it couldn't have happened any other way.
> Today, when I experience regrets and sadness that I can't control, I think; it couldn't have happened any other way.
I think of things in a similar way. All possibilities collapse into the only outcome that was ever truly inevitable. Reality is like the centre of a ven diagram with an infinite amount of circles. No "would of" no "should of' or "could of". Just "is". Only once we accept something can we move past it. Some people don't like this idea but I think that they just don't understand or want to acknowledge how much power the current moment holds.
There is a lot more suffering to be had when we try to escape our current suffering. A good example of this is drug addicts. On a long enough time line all forms of escapism eventually turn into prisons.
If you are reading this and want to disagree or explore these ideas I suggest the following. Sleep 2-4hrs one night then take a cold shower in the morning. As you find your mind and body trying to move away from the discomfort accept your circumstance. Stand still with the water passing over your face and focus on the freshness and crispness of the icy cold water.
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[ 13.6 ms ] story [ 411 ms ] threadGrieving while being a new mom must be brutal.
As always, yes and no. I'm a single father, my partner died when our daughter was 1.5 years old. A baby requires constant attention and care, so I didn't quite have the option of falling into some kind of depression and just doing nothing.
That said, I quite miss the abundant free time I used to have in my other life. Nowadays is constant battle about the littlest things. I pour the milk the wrong way and get screamed at for 15 minutes.
Don't know if this was your intention but this comes across as if having a depression was a choice, which it rarely is with any kind of illness.
They didn’t have the option of neglecting their kids either; somehow it doesn’t stop them from doing so anyway.
Mental illness is I think a different thing. Depression doesn't imply mental illness, nor does mental illness imply depression. I understand and agree that many people let mental illness come between them and whatever. It's a problem. It's just a different problem.
Also what is depression? I'm very sad that my partner died. I miss her. Some people have a chemical imbalance in their body. These are entirely different things. Perhaps I shouldn't have used that word, which has so many different meanings as to lose meaning altogether.
When you have a kid and don't want to get out of bed the whole day, eventually the kid is hungry enough to start screaming, and it will keep screaming until you get out of bed and feed it. It really is in everyone's mutual interest, depression or not. It's harder to stay depressed when you have to do things. It's easier to stay depressed when you can lie in bed the whole day.
I personally think that viewing it as a choice is the more productive of the two. That is to say, people have the choice to persevere, keep trying to improve, and trying to recover. Nothing will change without intent.
All too familiar.
Occasionally I stop to think what would I do if my SO passed away suddenly. I've found that it's easier to think about my own death than this.
Anyway, I hope you'll get some much needed downtime eventually.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/secure-a-bright-future-for-bess-a...
Trump and Musk are killing the very research that has a shot at saving lives and preventing these families from being torn apart. NIH and NSF are being gutted. Universities won't be able to do bio research at all under the new 15% cap on NIH indirect costs.
These decisions which save no appreciable amount of money have a real impact on people whose children must now grow up without them. As a new father this is really heartbreaking.
From their perspective, the origin of this thread is someone using a tragedy to emotionally manipulate on behalf of bloated institutions and their administrations — and every bit as monstrous as you believe their views are. Perhaps even more so.
These are indirect costs. You cannot do research without them.
What's going to happen if the government cuts off most indirect costs is that we're going to be forced to do research that can be covered by those costs.
So, no, more money isn't going to go to better research. It's going to go to much worse research and it will be a massive waste.
Instead of doing the best research I can, I'll need to think about the lowest overhead projects so that my department doesn't go bankrupt. That means taking no risks, avoiding new data collection, not starting up anything radically new that might not have an immediate payoff, etc. That's a bad deal for everyone!
Good scientists don't want to do bad research. The best will leave.
This will destroy the lead that the US has in science and technology over the rest of the world. Never mind kill countless people who would have been saved by new treatments.
The whole debate is whether 15% indirect costs is sufficient or whether it needs to be 30%+. Without a doubt universities are bloated and many don’t invest appropriately in their facilities — but where is the appropriate line?
Unfortunately, you didn’t add to that debate: you assumed the conclusion and then catastrophized based on your assumption. That exact style of argumentation is what makes people distrust that 30%+ really is needed — because nobody itemizes how, they just immediately resort to shaming and emotional manipulation.
> That means taking no risks, avoiding new data collection, not starting up anything radically new that might not have an immediate payoff, etc.
That’s compounded by all your personal examples of how this impacts you being direct costs — which have greater funding, with this change. And your claim that you can no longer do them dubious at best.
If you want the public to believe that was wrong, you’ll need to make that case.
Is there actual evidence that shows there was an issue that needed to be immediately addressed the way it was? Some evidence of "fraud" perhaps ?
How do you know the money going to the university isn't just forwarded onto the professors so they are funded? Doesn't sound that suspicious to me.
They looked at a handful of cherry picked charities that love to donate to high profile projects. Universities subsidize these grants internally to get other donations!
When I get money from say the Gates foundation, they are almost always topping up existing research not doing something new. On a high profile topic donors are attracted to.
These cherry picked foundations also give very little money; well under 1% of what we bring in. So the lack of indirect costs has a minor effect on the system that gets balanced by other well meaning donors.
Had they looked at other grants they would have seen that the indirect costs are in line with what NIH was paying. The bulk of other grants includes NSF, DARPA, ONR, etc.
Or they could have asked, when a corporation gives a university money, what do they think is a reasonable overhead rate? Because we don't accept money from for profit entities at anything less than the full overhead rate. And corporations pay it because it's reasonable. That's because they fund a lot of research and because they aren't a charity we would subsidize with other donations.
Or they could ask. When a corporation gets an NIH grant, what are their indirect costs? Are university indirect costs in line? After all everyone needs to keep the lights on.
Corporations are not subject to the cap at all! They can get a grant and charge 100% overhead. This only applies to universities. The government could not give a biotech company a grant with 15% overhead, no company would ever take it.
I have seen the indirect costs that some major corporations charge. 100% is low for them! And the government pays it. In every single contract with industry.
Except for universities. That they single out to dry to drive into insolvency.
So no. They didn't look at other grants. They could have computed countless statistics against tens of millions of grants for hundreds of billions of dollars. They picked the most elite nice small charities that give out a few hundred grants that we fund ourselves for the most bleeding heart projects.
You only listed peer government grant agencies — which people believe have similar problems to NIH.
> And the government pays it. In every single contract with industry.
And the same people generally believe that’s also full of fraud and waste. So what’s your argument?
> They could have computed countless statistics against tens of millions of grants for hundreds of billions of dollars.
So why don’t you do that, to prove them wrong? It sounds really easy.
No. I also gave two other options.
Get the overhead rate of corporations from government contracts.
Or get the overhead rate that corporations pay to universities, just like the government.
> And the same people generally believe that’s also full of fraud and waste. So what’s your argument?
So then compare overhead rates in commercial contracts between corporations.
> So why don’t you do that, to prove them wrong? It sounds really easy.
Oh yes. I will send NIH, Musk, and Trump a letter, they will realize the error of their ways and change course. Come on. Now you aren't discussing things in good faith.
Although for the record major universities, including mine, have already written such letters to the administration. Much good that did.
All of these numbers are publicly available. Feel free to look them up. It's bread and butter economics.
But no. This isn't about proving anyone wrong. These people don't care about right or wrong. We are so past that. This is about their attempt to break the system. The fallout of which will be disastrous.
The impact of the wholesale dismantlement of our research capacity won't be seen by the average person for a while. Maybe a good 10 to 20 years. Then slowly you'll notice that all of the new companies, medicines, etc. have a different language on them, their names sound a bit foreign, that foreign stock markets are getting attractive, and that someone else is getting rich instead of us.
Restarting research will be nearly impossible. Europe has been trying to restart its research enterprise for more than half a century and the US still dominates despite massive EU investment. The biggest winner will be China who is paying a lot to attract researchers.
I have a friend who is caught up in this and it is chaos.
Putting the fox in charge of the hen house is where it went wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY
When I failed to stop an acquaintance from killing himself a few years ago [1], it really fucked me up. I barely knew the guy, but I couldn't stop myself from feeling guilty over it, and I still have nightmares about it.
It led to a severe funk of depression that I still haven't gotten over, and it's led to poor sleep, poor performance at work, an increased irritability towards pretty much everyone, and I'm not completely convinced that that will ever stop.
I've seen therapists, taken various medications for depression and PTSD, trauma dumped onto pretty much anyone who will listen, and I think I'm a worse person now than I was in 2021.
I guess the likelihood of an event like this happening approaches 1 as you get older, but it doesn't mean it's not terrible.
[1] Written in some detail here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29185822
I'm truly sorry for all that you've been through and I hope you find comfort. Reading through your other post it seems likely to me that nothing you said or did could have made any difference.
Yeah I know, that's not really why I feel guilty, at least not exactly. I feel guilty because I noticed signs of someone who was suicidal, and explicitly chose to not do anything. Even if nothing would have changed, I still think I should have tried to do something, even if it was futile.
It feels like the universe was giving me a character test, and it feels like I failed it. I would like to think that when push comes to shove, I'd do the right thing, at least in regards to someone's life being on the line, but I guess at some fundamental level that's simply not true, or at least it wasn't in 2021.
I mean, I realize that no good comes from feeling bad about myself over it, certainly not for three years, but human psychology is pretty annoying sometimes.
Just as easily they didn't make the attempt and you would've thought you made the right call.
It's not on you.
I have the same type of problem. The one thing that's finally helped a little bit is allowing myself to feel the guilt (and all the emotions surrounding it) fully. Normally I try to push it down (because I don't actually have anything to feel guilty for), but suppressed emotions continue to live forever, and they will surface in your body and mind in many ways. Allowing myself to feel it gives me room to process the emotion finally.
Easier said than done, of course. You can't just turn the emotions on and off like a light switch, especially because the brain forms protective mechanisms to prevent you from feeling it. I've had some luck with IFS and somatic therapies.
The only reason you might think there were "signs" you should have caught now is because of what happened but no one could have known in advance.
From a total Internet stranger, give yourself some grace. Or what I have also heard: Judge yourself the way you would judge a good friend in the same situation. We often judge ourselves super harshly!!
Not quite that simple. I remember sitting in my bed that night, wrestling with whether or not I should call the police or something, and I explicitly chose to do nothing because I didn't want him to think I was weird.
Maybe my mind is blowing it up worse than it was, but that's how I remember it.
One of the more helpful things I was told was that there is nothing you can do if someone is determined to end their life. No intervention, no amount of reaching out, nothing. And that is a powerless place to be but it also means that you not calling the police the night your acquaintance died is likely not the deciding factor in this case.
Find a way to forgive yourself. Talk about your experience. To friends, to strangers, to a therapist. EMDR is great, from what I hear but even talk therapy is a really good place to start processing. I hope you find a way out of this, one internet stranger to another.
This is important actually - human memory is much more fragile than most people realise; we can and regularly do invent entire episodes in our heads, to retroactively explain some fact we have later come to know, or to fit some other thing that we have misremembered.
It's entirely possible that it didn't go down exactly as you remember, but rather your feelings are sharpening the memory and exaggerating your perceived misstep.
> I feel guilty because I noticed signs of someone who was suicidal, and explicitly chose to not do anything.
> It feels like the universe was giving me a character test, and it feels like I failed it.
So why not choose to do something different now?
Perhaps why you feel enduringly bad is because those events disrupted your self-narrative and that never recovered. Why not create facts that support a new narrative about how failing then led to you being a better person now? — eg, volunteering.
To have a purpose and to give meaning to things are important parts of how we, as humans, process such events. At least, according to Frankl.
Regardless, I hope you feel better.
I mean, sure, I haven't really had the same level of "moral character test" since then, I would like to think I'd do better now, but it's of course impossible to say.
> Why not create facts that support a new narrative about how failing then led to you being a better person now? — eg, volunteering.
I tried teaching for a few semesters primarily for emotional satisfaction reasons, and that had its moments, though that also made me realize that I am have a lot of emotional baggage that I need to work through.
At this point I have been just trying to keep myself busy with personal projects and diving deep into useless computer science theory. Fortunately, I never got into drinking or doing drugs, so all things considered reading used textbooks isn't the worst vice.
Without really thinking about it, I stopped, asked him if he needed help, tried to get him talking. He did talk to me for a while, but when I looked away to try and get a passing car to call for some help, he jumped.
I told my coworkers about it the next day, and it just seemed to make them uncomfortable. I didn't feel quite right about what had happened, but I wasn't sure why.
I had had a pretty crappy youth, my mom died when I was ten years old, and that was followed by a solid decade of rough times. I was no stranger to serious depression and had, by then, consciously decided I would not kill myself, after giving it serious thought.
I called a close friend of mine and told him the story. He had also lost his mother young. He just asked me one question and I immediately understood. He asked "Why did you stop?"
I myself had decided not to take my own life, but I believed I had the right to do so. Here I was, insinuating myself into a most intense and private moment this stranger to me was having. I would not have wanted that for myself.
I don't regret stopping that night. I would however, do things differently should it happen again.
I realize that some words on your screen are unlikely to make you feel much better about it, but I hope you do.
Now the shitball who yelled "jump" out of his window as he drove by, I hope that asshole is wracked with guilt still, twenty-five years later. Probably not though, feeling bad, like you have been, is the sign of a good person.
I understand; I have some similar regrets although perhaps not on the same scale. You held yourself to a certain standard, so you're disappointed in yourself that you didn't reach it.
I suppose this is the difference between knowing the path and walking the path - in theory we all know how we want to react in such a situation but when the time comes, the reality is often not exactly what we imagined and so we are still unprepared and make a choice that we come to regret. I think it's like any disaster - you'll get it wrong the first few times, no matter how prepared you think you are.
Thin consolation I know; like I said, I hope you can come to terms with it.
It wasn’t a character test. That’s a narrative that you are telling yourself. It was a thing that happened. In the past. Same thing with “it shouldn’t take 3 years to get over this”. Says who? It takes what it takes.
Our life is a garden, we can only tend it as best we can. The plants grow how they grow.
Let yourself grieve as you let go of old narratives and rediscover yourself and your life in each moment.
For me, narratives like this were an attempt at being a “good person” who “deserved to be loved”. I’ve slowly and painfully learned that isn’t how it works. We are all worthy of love. Love isn’t earned, it is a gift that we give and receive. I’m learning how to receive it, most importantly from myself. It’s the hardest and most beautiful thing.
I offer these words in the hope that they are helpful and to share things I’ve learned. Take them if they are, forget them if they are not.
Sending love and wishing you the best. I’ve been there. It’s hard. But time will pass, things will change, and it gets better.
I have listened to a lot of Dr David Burns' podcasts[1] (and recommend them) and there is a relevant part here which I will try to explain enough to tempt you to look at it more, in the hope it helps[2]. He observed that patients came asking him to make their bad feelings go away but the more he tried, the more they held onto the bad feelings ever tighter. After years of this, he came to understand that there is good which comes from feeling bad and helping the patient see it makes them realise they don't want to get rid of the bad feelings after all, only tone down the intensity.
The crux is: what kind of person would notice someone feeling suicidal and do nothing and learn the person suicided and then not feel bad or even feel good? Someone with no compassion who doesn't care about other people's suffering, someone with no moral compass, someone who takes no responsibility, someone who doesn't value living over dying, someone who thinks their actions in the world are meaningless, someone with no agency who needs other people to solve everything for them, someone who holds themselves to very low standards, someone selfish who doesn't want to help other people, someone cruel, etc. etc. Some of these things may resonate with you and those reveal things you value and like about yourself:
- feeling guilty shows I care about other people suffering. ("is that important to you?")
- regretting my choice to do nothing shows I am introspective, reflective, striving to do better. ("is that something you value?")
- wishing I had tried shows I value being helpful instead of selfish. ("and do you value that?")
- feeling that it's a bit my fault shows I want to take responsibility for my behaviour and don't shirk it and seek to blame everyone else. ("is that a trait you respect in others and want in yourself?")
- etc. for each of those things (and more).
OK if you can magically stop feeling bad at the push of a button, but the monkeypaw cost is that you become the uncaring, nihilistic, selfish, lazy, ignorer-of-suffering, who never reflects, lives on autopilot, never wants to do better... do you push the button? After finding some positive sides of your specific feelings which are things you specifically care about, you stop wanting to get rid of the feelings and grok that the good which comes from negative feelings is them protecting traits you value and want to keep[3]. Having negative feelings is not the problem, having them dialled up to 11 is the problem. You want to keep the feelings around as the guiding angel on your shoulder, just less intense. More of Dr Burns' work is on the therapy methods to make that change and dial the intensity down to a level you think would be a reminder, a guide, not a tormentor, but the insight in seeing principles you really do value hiding in the silver lining is sometimes enough to relax the feelings by itself.
> "It feels like the universe was giving me a character test, and it feels like I failed it. I would like to think that when push comes to shove, I'd do the right thing, at least in regards to someone's life being on the line, but I guess at some fundamental level that's simply not true, or at least it wasn't in 2021."
We aren't born perfect, and then fail the tests so the universe can laugh at us failing. We are born sinners and the test-driven-development helps us develop. It wasn't true in 2021 and the bad feeling is trying to be an adjustement which makes it more likely to be true from then on, but stuck on hard-lock. You're wishing to get rid of the bad feeling, the more you push it away the more it gets louder to try and make you hear it. Be guided by it, agree with it, then it's job is done and it can quieten down.
[1] danparsonson ↗ Not the OP, but that is a really interesting perspective, thank you for sharing it.
This inevitability is something you should stave off as long as possible. Meet new people, add new experiences, learn new things while avoiding the siren call of nostalgia and the comfort of limiting yourself to the familiar.
Don’t be too hard on yourself. Those who have experienced loss understand that sometimes we have to step back from things, life, our careers. It’s ok to do it. It’s your life, and the one of the greatest joys of life is: you get to choose how to live it.
I hope you bounce back. But take your time.
I had a friend die by suicide. Shortly after I met him for the first time IRL. It messed me up.
I’m sure you’ve heard it before but for the gallery, there’s the “in the moment” suicides where the thought comes and people act on it. If anyone feels that way, please call a hotline, it really is just a temporary feeling that will pass. Then there’s the “sick for a long time.” My therapist described this group as having an unhealthy brain. They’re taking in inputs like normal, but producing harmful urges. That sickness isn’t a thing others can counter or take on for themselves. There’s professional help if you (the reader) are feeling like this constantly. But like all sicknesses sometimes even the best treatments aren’t enough. (Therefore we should not blame ourselves for what we could have done differently).
Knowing that still doesn’t make it better, but it makes it lighter. For me, anyway.
I know that this ultimate freedom is also ultimate selfishness, because the loss is felt by your close ones, not you. But this makes me perhaps an asshole, but not sick.
I was someone's last phone call. I lost her when I was 16.
which is why I feel like I'm slowly becoming assholes because it's hard to have that kind of emphatetic feeling while still being sane in nowadays world. It's kinda sad that to have a healthy mental someone need to be less emphatetic.
don't know if that's actually true, of course.
Things happen and you adapt to survive it. And survival mode isn't made to make you happy, to become more generous or to expect more loyalty. And once your worldview changes for a pessimistic one, it'll taint everything around you (especially the new interactions with people)
Yes, some people change to be better: and that means (and I say it painfully) that many of them were the ones that caused unnecessary pain in others.
Some reference: https://www.hss.edu/conditions_emotional-impact-pain-experie...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341577702_Lacan_on_...
https://europepmc.org/article/med/33126037
We were together Only a little while And we believed our love Would last a thousand years.
I was active duty military, and he is also non-verbal and autistic.
The things she talks about, how focused she was and how hard it is to do any of that now, I've been experiencing exactly the same things. I find it hard to do anything, put anything together, etc. after 3 years of managing his care closely, being at his bedside all hours, having to scream at nurses to call away a code because he couldn't breathe (anaphylaxis), and a ton of other things. All of this while working 50+ hours a week, including remotely from his bedside.
It's like I burnt out that part of me. Maybe I'm slowly healing? But I don't feel like it. I get minutes or hours when I can hit that stride again and it's absolutely terrifying to realize that I can no longer keep it up.
I don't know that this comment adds anything to her story. I just felt like I understood her on a level that's hard to communicate and had the urge to share that.
Which is all to say, I hear you.
I quit my job in 2021, physically incapable of continuing and wanting to end it all, thinking if I just make it through each month it'll eventually get better and it never has. It only got worse like the universe kept ratcheting up the difficulty. My abusive partner only got more abusive as I didn't have a job (but paid all our bills) and couldn't muster any energy towards relationship milestones as the abuse and depression crippled me. Years of enduring this only led to now being abandoned and feeling worse than ever, like there is no upside worth the calamitous downsides in life.
One thing I dont get with similar stories - you felt things are seemingly going to shit in relationship yet no reaction, no quitting but maybe even double down? Abusive people will be abusive with no easy fix in sight, sucking it up for some real estate opportunity is a sure recipe for disaster and misery and no money gained will ever compensate for that. Thats one of 101 of life, there shouldnt be a need to really walk through it to confirm this. Kids do complicate this massively but you dont mention them.
Same for work it seems, working on edge of what you can handle means any little bad thing happening on top can send you over and down the spiral of breakdown.
I dont want to bash anybody and its more for others who will one day experience similar things - listen to your body, its telling you tons of things, and not for just fun. Its your best buddy so dont neglect it, there is no replacement and it really gets weaker with age, sooner than you would like.
I see a lot of high performers ending up similarly - very narrow focus on one brilliance ie work, but deep neglect of the rest. Never a nice story at the end. Nobody will be happy when dying from how much they worked or which investments worked out. If one really has to, set clear short term goals for when to stop it and have a bit of discipline (ie dont get used to better lifestyle that more money brings requiring you to continue).
I doubt there is good statistics or research on this, but anecdotally, it doesn't seem uncommon.
You also mention "neglect of rest", and in relationships you might also say neglect of the self - but often it's not explicit neglect, instead it's not even being used to or knowing how to recognize or fulfil those needs. As an example, after my tinnitus got worse, rest is simply so hard to achieve that it doesn't matter if I make it my top priority. People saying I need to rest more obviously annoys me, and claiming I'm neglecting rest would be borderline disrespectful.
Not comparing tinnitus and workaholism, just making a general statement about the use of "neglect" here.
I loved them so much that constantly fighting and being abused was still better than their absence now. I believed we would both turn things around, but it only got worse every few months. Being in this situation felt like a 90/100 misery scale, that I couldn't bear, and leaving would be asking me to volunteer for 95/100
> Same for work it seems, working on edge of what you can handle means any little bad thing happening on top can send you over and down the spiral of breakdown.
Also thought it would be temporary and not do permanent damage. In the midst of crisis, I'm thinking "just get through this month, it will get better" and then before you know it years have went by and all those months accumulated their toll
I'm slowly healing and learning how to live a new life. A life that I like. But it's been really fucking hard. This wasn't in the manual.
I hear you both (and anyone lurking :). Much love to you all.
I feel like I'm constantly mourning who I used to be, like it was a different person entirely and there's no getting that level of empathy or patience back again.
Zen practice and fitness have made an astronomically large improvement for me, but I guess everyone has to find that which helps them accept their current situation.
I’m half the person I used to used to be, after a painful burnout. And it’s not even close as painful as what the OP experienced.
So many of my friends went through some very hard time that I stopped counting.
So yes, is this everybody?
I'm always wondering where the interesting people went, but maybe they became just like everyone else.
And since you mention that you are young, just to let you know: when "celebrating" the latest new years eve, all guests present (40 to 50yo) agreed that the main source of hope for the near future was the early disillusionment of younger generations. More power to you! :)
While I know this thread is self-selecting, it’s amazing how many folks share similar stories of how they feel burnt out in life since 2020.
I fear we’ve yet to hit rock bottom and more societal strife is impending, both in America and elsewhere. But like you, I agree there is some hope that those just starting out will rebuild something better from the ashes of it when it’s all over.
As a 35-year old though I worry I’ll be too old to truly reap the benefits. Although elder millennials, whose formative adult years were defined by the Great Recession and Gen Z, who had them defined by COVID, might have it even worse.
It think the term "good old days" is not some delusion of the aging mind as the media keeps trying to convince us. As I've watched things getting worse during my own life, I've been getting increasingly confident that things really were better in those old days. I mean, even the kinds of people who existed; they were simpler people, happier people. They lived lives of mystery and serendipity.
Now you basically have to be rich to be happy and you usually have to do bad things to be rich... So it's difficult to find happiness nowadays. IMO, success in life is being both rich and also having a clean conscience; then you can have everything you need, yet still have the ability to look people in the eyes and mean what you say when you speak.
After 9 months what I have realized is that my 30+ year partner was not a good fit for me. The mental space cleared by not worrying about my ex-partner's contentless has feared up most of my brain power.
What I realize now is that my partner was wasting many of my brain cycles that are now freed up. I actually have fallen back into a brain space that feels like my early college graduate brain. The brain I had before I took responsibility for my partner's happiness.
Battered husk is the best description I can think of for how I felt.
It took a while, but I was extremely lucky to find the right combination of therapy, SSRIs, and life changes to drag myself out of the hole. I now have a stable job doing something that sparks my interests and makes a meaningful contribution, and my love of life has returned. I still have the occasional day where it feels like I start to backslide, but they are getting rarer.
I want to reassure anyone who feels tired, burnt-out, and hopeless, that things can and do get better.
Slowly starting to see some light. My two young kids get me through this, they are with me every other week and give purpose to my life, they are best thing ever.
I hear you too. Don't be scared to ask for professional help. Meds can make a difference.
Seeing people's testimonials made me feel better so I thought I'd post mine.
You don't know how much, when, how or why, but it will happen. I consider someone blessed if they make it to middle-age largely "intact."
When you're young and unencumbered and largely undamaged you need to use that time in any way you can; inevitably you'll end up "walking wounded" one way or another--less than you were--unable to return to who you were before whatever(s) happened.
When I was young I'd encounter older men that struck me as "defeated", tired, incurious, dismissive, and I'd never understood why until the last ~half decade or so of my life.
I really think human "life" and vitality is something that does get "spent", often against your will.
But, also, a part of me died during our attempts to have another kid. At some point it just broke me in that dimension. I have doubts that it can be fully healed. It is grief, and it demands space and an outlet sometimes. And it hurts from time to time. It's no longer debilitating, but it is still there.
That level of understanding between you and her should be universally shared between everything that is living. This way, support can always be found.
I wish you and your family all the best. The same goes for Bess, as I told her many times. I wish I could give you a hug, make you feel protected and capable, as the hero that you are.
> It's like I burnt out that part of me. Maybe I'm slowly healing? But I don't feel like it.
You've probably heard it, but maybe to help remind, I just wanted to say - It's okay to be burnt out and do little or nothing. I believe it's the minimum requirement to healing and it _will_ take years maybe even a decade. I was cheated on and that affected me for 2 years and that's trivial to the road you walk.
I've been doing my own thing for close to two years now, trying to heal.
Maybe I will someday. Until then, I somehow manage to keep up with his (still elevated) needs and try to be a good husband and father to my other child.
https://thetelepathytapes.com/
She had a simple fever cramp (her second) in the tub and nearly drowned because of it.
This was roughly a year ago. I remember walking out of the building at work in trance, looking for a cab, after I got the call, thinking my daughter was dead. She was back to normal (apart from the nasty infection that lead to the fever cramp) on the next day. Buy my wife and I have never been the same since. I entered the apartment 2 days later, and the tub was still filled with water and some of my daughters hair, and there was blood on the living room floor because the medics gave her sedatives and she kicked against the syringe. While cleaning my daughter's blood from the floor, I got the distinct feeling that she really died and that I was just in a very long dream in which she survived, and that I would wake up very soon to a world of sorrow. That feeling has never left me. It may explain why most things now feel completely irrelevant to me, including work.
We quickly bought a house 6 months later and left the apartment. I now realize that this was mostly motivated by the fact that we couldn't stand the look of the bathtub anymore. It was also because we simply weren't afraid anymore of the debt, of the additional work, of moving. Fear is something that only remains a numb feeling after such an experience.
She is 5 now. The worst part is that she fully remembers. A few weeks ago, she freely and cheerfully explained in daycare that she once was bathing and then cried "mum" and then "fell asleep under water". At dinner a few months ago, she also explained that to us and then laughed and mentioned that "mum must've thought I am a mermaid" and happily continued eating. It crushes me just thinking of it.
If my wife had folded 2 or 3 shirts before entering the bathroom, my daughter would be dead now. If my daughter hadn't yelled "mum!" the second the fever cramp started, of if she would've yelled it under water, she would also be dead now. In this probabilistic decision tree, the leaf where my daughter survives has a probability that is negligibly small. To my very great surprise, I have found that this inevitably leads to religion. I have never been religious before, but I have indeed found great relief in prayer and sitting around in empty churches.
Life to us is now nothing but walking on a thin crust of ice, which spans over an infinite hell of fire, horror and torture. At any time, without warning, the ice may break.
Me and my wife had a horrible experience ourselves where our 2 year old daughters best friend(also 2 years old) drowned in their family swimming pool after figuring out how to open the door herself. I know this wasn't nearly as close to heart as the other stories in this post, but receiving that text on a Saturday evening was super tough and me and my partner was crushed for months after it happened. It's now been 10 months and we rarely think about it anymore although we did end up in a house WITHOUT a swimming pool, so in a way it's still with us.
My life has a stark demarcation of before and after that, and sometimes it feels like nothing is quite real since.
One day my wife said she was going to give our 4 year old daughter a bath, then I find my daughter by herself in the bath and my wife all the way across the house in the bedroom. I asked “Why aren’t you watching her?” The reply, “She’s fine. She knows how to swim and the water isn’t even that deep.”
I work remotely in the upstairs bedroom and will occasionally come down for water. Half the time I find my one year old eating alone in his high chair in the kitchen, with my wife doing something in the bedroom. “Where are you? What if he chokes?” “You don’t trust me. He’s fine. I can hear him from the bedroom.”
My wife will get in road rage incidents. People flip her off and yell threats at her as she slingshots through traffic with our little kids in the back seat. “You’re going to crash driving like that.” “Stop telling me how to drive.” Someone pretended to pull a gun out on her after she swore at them. “You’re going to get shot.” “No I’m not. I can tell if any of those people would have a gun.”
She also has severe ADHD. Our daughter got under the sink when she was two and ate half a dishwasher detergent pod before my wife noticed and called poison control. Another day when my daughter was two my wife forgot to shut the gate at the bottom of the stairs when she came upstairs to talk to me during the workday. Suddenly I hear a series of thuds and cries. Our little girl had fallen down the flight of stairs after trying to follow my wife without her noticing. Same thing happened to my 1 year old son under the watch of my wife’s mother.
I’m so scared that one day I’m going to get a call about something horrible that has happened to my kids either because of my wife’s inattention or anger issues.
There's something I wanted to say reading this whole thread. I just hope it does not come off as lecturing or preaching. It's this: Don't feel bad about things that there is no way for you to change. Just do your very best about the things you can. Nobody can ask more of anyone.
This is how I've felt every time a friend has tried and failed to commit suicide. I'm so sorry.
The rest of that event - why I walked away from the group, whether I was called back or just lucky, or even what I thought or felt when I went into the water - all gone. Can't remember. Only that afterwards, it felt odd how panicy mum was, and that she immediately insisted on swimming lessons.
So when I was five, this was an experience like "any" - How was I supposed to understand that I had a close brush with death, or what that even meant ?
(I wish your daughter a long and happy life, and may neither her nor anyone have to experience the feelings that you did, or my mum)
My grandfather ran me over when I was 6 and nearly killed me. When he ostensibly realized what happened, he took his sweet time to exit the vehicle while it was pinning me down, slowly get out, stare at me, and then made sure to run over me again while moving the vehicle. The only two things that saved me was that he was driving a light pickup truck, and my bike folded around my chest and neck and prevented the wheel of the truck from crushing them. I will never know if he saw me and ran over me intentionally or not, but I was in plain view waiting for the bus and he never expressed any emotion at any point over what happened.
I was crying and shaken up and traumatized, but he made sure I still got on that bus without so much as a quick medical checkup. I felt very numb and isolated for a long time after that. No one around seemed to understand that I'd just experienced a near-death experience. I also didn't receive a new bike for years, seemingly out of spite.
No permanent injuries on our end, but what you said about walking on a thin crust of ice rings true. And feeling like there's another reality where things didn't turn out OK. All the best to you, I am glad your daughter is OK.
My son is non verbal, non mobile.
We live the life of the Servant. We used to define ourselves by our profession, now we define ourselves as "special needs parent". This is a step closer to actually being more human. How trivial our lives were before, how we wasted so many hours on shit that didn't matter!
It felt like I was running on adrenaline and cortisol for two years. Scrambling to find anything to help, steadily applying the steel tip of my proverbial boot to the backside of the healthcare industry, doing home IVs, changing ostomy bags, making sure meds were straight, trying to gently urge her to eat something at all, deep diving into the pits and snares of clinical trials, looking at adjunct therapies and arguing with doctors about our right to do those, growing to an ambient, everpresent rage over time.
When she passed, it all went silent, and then the world shut down.
I still feel like my brain has changed. It's difficult to put my finger on how.
In retrospect a lot of the time I spent trying to find options and understand the disease and its treatment would have been much better spent tending to the emotional needs of my family. I should have accepted much earlier that it was over and just prepared for that inevitability rather than clawing and scratching for options right until the end. I just didn't know how to do it.
I’m not sure what comes next but really hope that energy and happiness finds its way back to you with time.
If you're someone who struggles with chronic depression this statement is extremely demoralizing. But it's also hearsay -- you're a stranger on the internet, so you want me to believe based on a stranger's colleague's wife's alleged research, that depression cannot be effectively treated?
If you want to share that researcher's work, provide a link. Keep your rumors, suppositions, and lay-person's doomer psychology to yourself, unless you are planning to make a post with direct citations that is in effect nothing like the comment you did leave.
People's lives depend on this. You can't just post "if you have depression you'll never be able to change it" cavalierly as though you are an expert and your post has no consequences.
Someone is going to read your supposition, your rumor, believe it, and despair.
I finally found treatment that worked for me in the pandemic (Ketamine assisted psychotherapy), and it was life changing. It has been 2.5 years since I stopped treatment and I'm 10x happier. I wake up every day happy and curious about what the day will bring.
By
Richard M. Ryan, Edward L. Deci
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30652098-self-determinat...
However, in the last few years she said that her "negative voices" (not actually schizophrenia, but her own nagging, disrespectful, negative narration) have gotten under control through CBT. She says it's something she needs to work at daily, though, because her brain seems to be wired that way. And she's controlling it and staying healthy without any meds.
So while I think there's something in that anecdote I don't think it means that you can't have a good life.
Wrong. I lost at least a decade of really great years to this belief. It's bullshit. I've made huge strides in my "clinical" depression despite my environment not markedly improving. I did, however, improve myself enough to recognize and stop maladaptive behaviors.
It's hard as hell to change yourself, but you're not immutable.
And yet with the other choice you might have regretted "not having done everything you could have". That is the curse of those with the ability to actually do something. In many ways, those who do not understand and simply place their faith in doctors are less burdened.
You did what you thought best at the time; that is all you could have done. Nothing you did or did not do was a mistake.
There are no "right" answers when facing mortality. My sympathies for what you went through, and I hope you are doing better.
This is so true.
I wish I could write a better response but my wife has her periodic pet-scan in 1hr. Those scan always leave me paralyzed with fear of recurrence of the metastatic breast cancer she has. it's probably off topic so sorry internet strangers but writing it brings a little relief.
All my sympathy to those who lost someone!
I sympathize deeply.
No way. If you had done that you would have felt even worse for not trying everything you possibly could.
My sister died of ovarian cancer right at the start of COVID. My big sis, 1 year older. Even though the oncologists said early on that it was extremely aggressive and wasn't responding to treatment, nobody in the family could process it. Oddly, except myself. I live an hour away from them and I think that separation allowed me space to process the inevitable. I tried to be that person who took care of the emotional needs of the family, and my brother in law. But I didn't have a single person to "confide in" because nobody accepted that she was going to die, including her. She had just had a baby a few months before (IVF, and tbh I'm wondering if that process kicked the cancer off). She had to look at her tiny baby and imagine him growing up not knowing her. You could see it in her eyes when she looked at him. Yet she couldn't bring herself to make little recordings, write emails or notes to him for when he's 12 or whatever. That's how much denial she was in - she denied him that sense of what it would be like to have her talk to him.
The first to give up hope was her husband actually. I suppose because he was closest to the front lines, and saw the toll it took on her, the constant downhill. And the dozens of other things that aren't cancer but are part of the depressing array of events like pleural effusion, blood clots, and the digestive system eventually getting blocked off with tumors. When he finally admitted to me that it was terminal, she had less than two months left.
My lovely wife is sitting across the table from me now wondering what "heavy stuff" I'm typing. I couldn't imagine being able to accept losing her.
I hope your life is recovering.
My brother in law met a lovely woman just over a year ago. She has two kids and he had his one. They make a great family unit and she's good for him. Even in practical ways like taking turns bringing the kids to school or sports, covering for him when he had to work late. My family get along with her too. I know it still hurts him to think about what he lost but he's very much a "get on with life" person, so he gets on.
This is resonates with me. My father died from cancer a year ago, the bit that survived two treatments was extremely fast moving. I had a business with him, and I spent a year trying to do as much of his job and mine to help him out. But he wanted to work, and I think it was good for him to have forward looking goals.
It feels like every day I am trying to figure out how to make my brain work the way it used to. And almost every day I am trying to decide if we had a bus factor of 1. Fortunately I have family support, and a part time job to keep me busy and bring a bit of money in.
I think about the emotional support and I think we did the best we could have. My dad was clear about listening to the doctors about his options. We spent some time reading about options and researching. But it was clear to all of the immediate family that we lacked the depth of knowledge needed. It was interesting to read about and learn about the techniques. And we were able to get advice from medical family friends. But his team was very good and thoughtful. We also thought the treatments were working. Until a later scan showed a small blip and before we could understand the options and decide he was in the hospital and terminal.
I still feel like I'm moving through the motions of running our business, but not actually doing it. Or something, it is a frustrating feeling that I am trying to fix but maybe I can't. Or maybe it will take years.
You used to be a superhero. And you still are. Remember who you are.
You were drowned in frustration. But now you acknowledge the reality of the present situation, it's time to execute the new accomplishments that will prove your greatness.
I apologize if I overshared, hth.
I think one thing I worry about is my daughter possibly not growing up with a mother. Like how that will affect her.
It's been traumatic for myself personally, but it hasn't been ...I'm still highly functional and I'm still continuing to live life to the fullest.
So far, he’s completely fine without her. He claims he has memories of her, but I think he just remembers photos and videos that we’ve watched together. I don’t think he knows what he’s missing.
How do you retain that connection, or do you just leave it in the past?
To retain the connection, we look at photos together every week and I tell him stories about her, and their relationship.
I spoke to him just now, and he says that he misses her but is unable to articulate how. Perhaps these ceremonies will grow more important over time, and as he grows older perhaps he will appreciate that we took the time to celebrate her.
I have an adult friend, who lost his mother at a young age too. He tells me that he only really started to miss her once he got older, around 12, and as an adult. He doesn’t remember who she was or why, but he misses the idea of having had family dinners at home every day etc. The dynamic in a household is very different when there is one adult and one child at home, versus two adults to a child.
It’s also a very big ask of a new partner for them to step in and fulfil the role of mother to your child.
I feel like for me it would be a) Wanting someone I have a deep connection with and b) Someone who's interested in children. I feel that keeps it simple.
But yeah, I just think about how much I wouldn't be able to provide my daughter as a male, given I know so little about hair, make up etc. I mean, I'd obviously learn it all, but it would be easier to have someone who was already on that page.
Don't worry about that! My daughter lost her mother when she was 1.5 years old. It's important to have a sensible female role model. A grandma or an aunt will do just fine.
Please do take good care of yourself!
When my partner died, I read up a bit about the problems children face when being raised by a single father. By far the biggest problem was the father's alcoholism. So I decided not to become an alcoholic (a prospect which actually looked rather enticing at a certain point in time). Also I try to be gentle with myself: it's ok to mess up.
Again, hang in there and best of luck to you and your family!
In a few years I probably won't be able to. I'm a married father of two, and every year stories like this hit me harder.
About a year after my marriage split up I went to the marriage of someone close to me. During the ceremony I had severe chest pains and was pretty sure I was having a heart attack. I didn't want to disturb the ceremony (they were exchanging rings!) so I figured I'd wait 5 minutes then get up and call an ambulance.
The pain went away, and I didn't do anything about it for a while. Later I had a panic attack when at a new GF's place and had to leave.
Eventually I went to a therapist, and they pointed out these are symptoms of PTSD and trauma.
Anyway, I'm fine now. But it wasn't until I had the physical symptoms that I believed the impact of these things wasn't just something I could ignore.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/takotsubo-cardio...
Being at a wedding might trigger a strong physical reaction from your breakup.
Once you can endure that pain while remaining calm enough to hear Bateman narrate my pain is constant and sharp... in your mind, you'll be "alright".
but we're not. we change, moment to moment, forever, endlessly -- it doesn't stop, ever. not when we go to sleep. not when we go through a traumatic event. not when we die.
a stark reminder of our fragility. i hope the author can find peace.
> Stand at the brink of the abyss of despair, and when you see that you cannot bear it anymore, draw back a little and have a cup of tea. > > — Elder Sophrony of Essex
It's a quote from the end of Lars Doucet's post, Losing my son.
Stay strong, and if not strong, then just stay.
https://www.fortressofdoors.com/i-lost-my-son/
I lost my dad suddenly just two months prior, and my grandma shortly before that, but the loss of your partner (and in this manner after she refused help and I watched helplessly as she spiralled in her last year) eclipses any grief or pain I had experienced before or could have even imagined.
But I wanted to show a little appreciation for the OP and others on here sharing their devastating losses. Knowing love inevitably turns into grief but that that is a more universal experience makes me feel a little less alone. Small blessings but at points like these, we take whatever morsels we can get.
I hope it gets better for you. It has for me.
I was 14 when, within months: my mom's dad died, my dad died, my mom was diagnosed with the melanoma that took her 7 years later, a fire took the longtime family home. And she developed trigeminal neuralgia - a 9-10 for pain and she had it on both sides of her face. All of this impacted her. And us. For her part, she carried on with work and managing a family.
Fast forward. Well into my own marriage, my wife spiraled into mental health issues that subjected the kids and I to decades of sabotage, abuse and ceaseless, exhausting catastrophes.
I too learned that when I am hallowed out, I can continue on. When I am beyond my own help, someone else might not be and there might be something I can do. At this point, helping others is pure self preservation.
I also decided to go visit one of our favourite places (Thailand) to get away for a bit, meet up with a friend, do some writing, and make some new memories here. It’s been really hard at points but definitely healing too.
My son took his own life on February 1st, 2023. I feel like someone took a huge melon baller and scooped out the middle of my chest. My wife and I had been trying to get him back on his feet for two years at that point. He died quietly about 10 feet from me. The family cat kept trying to get me to open his bedroom door. I kept trying to respect his privacy. I finally took her hint.
He was the best person I knew. I imagined vicariously living a much better life through him. I still feel like a fragment of my former self. He was a sometime contributor here, by the way, under jwmhjwmh.
Anyway, I give my love to everyone here sharing stories of their losses. I find sharing memories of these loved ones is more comforting than platitudes, and certainly more healing than pretending nothing happened.
The most meaningful thing someone ever said to me, after my daughter was stillborn full term, was: "There is nothing to say."
I would describe my wife similarly, it sounds like. Kind, value-driven, cared too much, was the biggest personality in the room but somehow always made people feel seen and heard. But also deeply troubled and hid a lot of it, even from me I’m discovering.
Sending love your way as well. I agree, platitudes or things like “they’re in a better place now” or “looking down on us” make me only feel worse, but genuine compassion does help feel like the weight isn’t on our shoulders alone, even for a little rest.
You won't be the same person after, but in some ways that's good. Highly recommend grief counseling. Feel free to reach out if you need help from someone who has been through it.
Here is an excerpt where author William Irvine highlights Marcus Aurelius' thoughts on fate and grief:
> Marcus also advocates taking a fatalistic attitude toward life. To do otherwise is to rebel against nature, and such rebellions are counterproductive, if what we seek is a good life. In particular, if we reject the decrees of fate, Marcus says, we are likely to experience tranquility-disrupting grief, anger, or fear. To avoid this, we must learn to adapt ourselves to the environment into which fate has placed us and do our best to love the people with whom fate has surrounded us. We must learn to welcome whatever falls to our lot and persuade ourselves that whatever happens to us is for the best. Indeed, according to Marcus, a good man will welcome “every experience the looms of fate may weave for him.
Today, when I experience regrets and sadness that I can't control, I think; it couldn't have happened any other way.
I think of things in a similar way. All possibilities collapse into the only outcome that was ever truly inevitable. Reality is like the centre of a ven diagram with an infinite amount of circles. No "would of" no "should of' or "could of". Just "is". Only once we accept something can we move past it. Some people don't like this idea but I think that they just don't understand or want to acknowledge how much power the current moment holds.
There is a lot more suffering to be had when we try to escape our current suffering. A good example of this is drug addicts. On a long enough time line all forms of escapism eventually turn into prisons.
If you are reading this and want to disagree or explore these ideas I suggest the following. Sleep 2-4hrs one night then take a cold shower in the morning. As you find your mind and body trying to move away from the discomfort accept your circumstance. Stand still with the water passing over your face and focus on the freshness and crispness of the icy cold water.