What was the lowest point in your life, and after the fact were you glad that things turned out the way they did?

We weren’t going out long enough to even call it a relationship, but getting dumped by my first boyfriend was pretty devastating. It was worth the pain though, because if that hadn’t happened I would never have met my fiancee.

I think the lowest point in my life was when our first child was born. It was my first marriage and a week before she was born we both lost our jobs. We had no income, no insurance and were living off oatmeal, creamed wheat and peanut butter. One thing that we were out of that we could not be without was dish soap. We had none and soon we had no clean dishes left.

I went to the market and selected the cheapest bottle of dish soap there- a small bottle for $1.98 and paid with a check because we had already fished through the couch cushions and emptied the change jar. The check bounced, both the store and the bank charged us $20.00 making the little bottle of dish soap cost $41.98 that we did not have. It was so humbling and demeaning. It was like the world was against us.

It took two years to get out of the poverty. It was hard but it made me a better person. It also allowed me to understand what “not having” really meant- something that I had never before experienced.

My step-daughter became involved with gangs and drugs. When her mother and I tried to put an end to it, she accused us both of abusing her. She was immediately put into a foster home (which allowed her access to her new friends), and my wife and I had to go to court and we had to get a lawyer to defend us. Between court costs, the lawyer, and the foster care and group home bills, it cost us about $40,000.
In the end, my SD wrote the Judge and admitted she made it all up, but it was several years later.
She still feels terrible about what she put us through, and has cleaned her life up.
We don’t talk about that anymore.

I think it happened the October following the diagnosis of Leukemia. That is when I found out the treatments were not working and I would have to repeat treatments and it was going to be more aggressive. It was the first time I had a doctor look me in the face and tell me to make sure I had things the way I wanted them, legally. I had an uphill battle and at that moment, I had the disadvantage.

I am not one to feel sorry for myself, but at that moment, I felt so lost, so alone. I was surrounded by love and friends, but still – I was the one that was facing this – physically.

I got my game face on and fought, continued to fight and over the months, realized something. This dark moment, turned out to be one of the biggest gifts of my life. I now truly appreciate each day. I know not to take life for granted – no matter how healthy you are, it can go away and fast…in the time it takes for a cell to form (and not properly), that is how long it takes to change your entire life. I learned to slow down. I learned to appreciate things around me and not to covet things like physical beauty…let’s just say leukemia, me and no hair…well….not my prettiest moments. Oh well.

I think it taught me how to love deeper, too. I allowed more love in my life and gave love, more freely. Most of all, it taught me to trust myself. It taught me to fight for myself. I did, and continue to do so. Leukemia has taught me to be strong.

I once lived with an ADHD man who all but killed me with his zaniness. Came a day when I wanted to throw in the towel and it put me in the position to address a lot of my own stuff, long overdue for attention and care.

For me, one of the very lowest points in my life was when my father passed away from cancer. It actually took me months to stop grieving because it hurt so much to lose him and I spent a lot of time angry at myself because I never told him enough, when he was alive, how much I loved him. I closely surrounded myself with family and friends for a good deal of time after his death and grew stronger with their comfort and support.

@Bluefreedom – ((((((hugs)))))

My lowest point was related to love. Looking back, I’m not glad that things happened the way they did and I’ll never completely heal. It’s been years, and sometimes I still break down and cry.

Once in my career, a company that I worked for got its venture capital funding pulled. I was laid off. Even though I knew it was coming and that it had nothing to do with my performance, I found myself at a very low ebb. No one had ever, in effect, said I was not wanted. It was always me who left jobs.

A friend asked me to send him my resume. A few days later, a person from their human resources department called me and told me I was not qualified to work there, because I didn’t have an MBA. That made me feel even worse, even though I had not actually applied for a job there and did not want to work there.

I went on an interview at another company. It was one of those round-robin things that took four or five hours. Finally, I asked what the average work week was. They told me that anyone who did not put in 60 hours a week was considered not fit for promotion. I told them I wasn’t interested.

I was pretty despairing at that point. I had never really had to work at finding a job. People had always come after me.

I went back to the president of my former company and convinced him he needed to hire me as a contractor to help him complete some marketing campaigns and to work with him to sell the two divisions of the company. It turned out to be a fantastic opportunity, because I learned a whole bunch of new skills. I had never really liked the guy, but he was very smart and had a Stanford MBA. He loved to hear himself talk so I learned a lot (setting aside all the crap about how wonderful he was).

Then when we got around to selling the publishing division, the buyer asked me to come on board and run it as a subsidiary company. That led to an unexpected chance to step up a whole level.

I could give you other examples. Sometimes, out of the ashes of awful can come new direction and new opportunity. Of course, that is only small consolation when one is slogging through the awful.

most of my life.
get back to me in 15 years.

Each one of the answers to this question brought up different events that made me feel as though I was not going to make it through. This is the most recent so it sticks in my head.

About two and half years ago I packed up my house and my kids and moved from my home town halfway across the country. I landed here and instantly hated it. I left a 70 degree So Cal day in November and landed in below freezing temps. Everything was brown and dead and I felt like a Popsicle! At the time the only good thing about this place was my sister. Our house on the coast did not sell and a renter we had in another property moved out. We were making three house payments and a third less salary. I knew in my heart that my marriage was coming apart and I was terrified of what it would do to my ex and my children. I spent months and months so overwhelmed I didn’t want to leave the house. I forced myself to sign up for some online classes at the community college and six months later I enrolled at the local university. I found what I want to do with my life (finally!), found the courage to leave an unhappy marriage, and found the love of my life.

It has been a long road and I’m not quite there yet, but I feel like I am on the right track and I’ll get there soon enough. For now I’m trying to relax, enjoy the journey, and thank God for helping me find my way out.

I think I’m living one currently, some days are better than others.

There have been a couple stages in my life that were the lowest point in different aspects.

My lowest mentally was when I was between 14–20. Not being able to cope, not wanting to even be alive. Fighting through that made me a stronger person, it made me more compassionate and humble. I think the lowest was when I signed the papers to become a dependent of my parents at age 19. Giving up the rights as an adult, so my parents still could make the decisions. Being considered disabled through the state because of my anxiety and depression made me even more depressed. I thankfully got over it. I worked through the pain and the fear. I do worry I’ll fall back there one day, but I have a very strong family support system to help me in case of that.

A part of that time is when I did a lot of terrible things, I lied a lot. I started dating my husband and knew I wanted to be with him but was very confused. I ended up more hurt than anything from a lot of crap that happened, because of people intentionally hurting me…even though I had intentionally hurt them in the past. I couldn’t understand why revenge would be that important to someone, and I think going through that and realizing “Hey, I’m not a shitty person. I wouldn’t do that to someone and I don’t want to be with someone that would even think to do that to another human being” Big wake up call.

And now….financially, we’re definitely at one of our lowest points. In October when my husband first got laid off, we had NO savings, we had to pay bills, we had to buy food for our son and then we had nothing left. I lost 5lbs out of hunger. Too proud to ask for money from my parents. From there until now my husband has lost multiple jobs because of the economy and we are feeling it. It’s painful to know you are responsible for a little being and wanting to give them the world and feeling like a complete failure.
But, from my past I know things will get better. I know this isn’t it. I know my relationship with my husband is strong enough to endure these hardships. We’ve cried together over our problems, we’ve made a plan for our life and we want to make sure we see it out together. Neither one of us could have ever guessed this is what life would be like at this point, but it is where we are and we do our best. I’m just glad I have him to help me through it.

@casheroo I am sorry that you are going through that. We are in the same layoff boat.

It is produced a lot of anxiety for both of us. (I make jokes about when we move under a bridge, but I feel it is something that could happen—an unimaginable first in my life). I think with a child it would be a million times worse.

Take care. I know you are right that things will improve!

I have OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disoder). Most of the time, I am fully functional and pretty much asymptomatic. However, I have been known to go through crises where it gets much worse. During those days, weeks, or even months, I don’t ever want to kill myself, but I just wish that something could take the pain way. Like someone else said, I always know that I will eventually get better, but at the time it is hard to believe that. Plus, the therapy for OCD can be quite painful. I think that my experiences with this have helped me to be more compassionate towards other people. (At least I hope it has.)

I am currently facing the hardest thing that I have ever had to face. No one wants to admit that their marriage has failed, especially when two beautiful children are involved. But after reading through what everyone else wrote, I know that there are much bigger battles that people face everyday, and I am lucky to be healthy and still young enough to make a whole new life.

Back when I was 19 the girl I fell in love with and I gave my virginity to was killed in a car accident in her home town about 200 miles away. I lost my first love to an act of stupidity. A drunk driver. I remember hearing about it, drinking myself silly on vodka and tequila, and sitting outside my house, with a rifle between my knees and the barrel pressed to my forehead. I had my thumb on the trigger, and all it would have taken was about two pounds of force to do the deed.

I didn’t pull the trigger, obviously, even though she and I had made a death/suicide pact before she left to go home that summer. I’m glad I didn’t because I wouldn’t have met my present wife, the love of my life. and I wouldn’t be fluthering, either.

Between September and December of last year my father died of cancer, my aunt and uncle died of strokes and a good friend died of a heart attack. We also had to put my basset hound to sleep. So five deaths in almost as many months.

On top of that, my wife had been unemployed for over a year and we were completely out of money. I was working three jobs, seven-days-a-week just to pay the major bills and survive.

I had no time to mourn the loss of my father as I was working so much. My wife was slipping into a depression and I rarely saw my daughter.

Then, in January, my toxic mother decided to exit my life and take her mother and sister with her (long story).

It looked really dark for quite some time. I’ve lived through some hairy stuff in my life, but never in such quantity.

Luckily, in May my wife landed a new job. Now we’re slowly climbing out of this giant financial hole. I’m down to only two jobs now.

I still miss my dad terribly and I’ll never understand my mother.

I have believed in never giving up and that this too shall pass for quite some time – but I had my doubts this time around.

Ultimately, it was my wife and daughter that kept me from falling apart. I am forever grateful for their love.

I have also learned to never take anything for granted. It can all disapear in a blink.

I have found that life tends to be made up of a series of low points. When my meds are working, then I can also see that there are high points in between and some flat bits, too.

My first really low point was when I graduated from college with a shiny new degree in Biology only to discover that I was over-qualified for the jobs that I could be interviewed for and under-qualified for the jobs I wanted. That’s when I first found out I suffered from depression.

Next was in graduate school, when I was having health issues, plus being harassed verbally by my major professor and sexually by one of his other students, and I just wanted to be somewhere else.

The next really low point was the first time my husband was hospitalized. He went for a check up and stayed for 12 weeks. I was working full time and had a 6 month-old and a 2½ year old, and no one would tell me what his prognosis was.

But then, a few years later, during the period that my grandmother died, our neighbor died, a friend died, our cat died, our car died, and we had to foreclose on a house we thought we had sold safely, he had heart problems and ended up with a quintuple bypass and complications, followed by the time his gall bladder exploded the same week my children’s godmother fell down the stairs at home and wasn’t found for three days. That time the docs told me he had a 10% chance of making it and asked if I had a black dress.

Then there was the time he fell while we were out of town avoiding Hurricane Rita, ended up in the hospital for ten days, and we discovered he had been having small strokes. He was also sent home incontinent but no one bothered to tell me. I just figured it out the hard way.

However, right now I am definitely at a very low point.

The IRS says they lost two of my returns and my son killed the hard drive they were on so I am having to recreate them.

The school principal that hates me and firmly believes no child suffers from mental illness sicced CPS first on the one teacher that was helping my son, and then on me, which then brought APS into the picture, so now my son has a record of elder abuse. Both the teacher and I are in the process separately of suing the school district as well.

My son’s meds may not be working or it could be he is just being a teenager. In any case, he is very unpleasant to be around.

My husband’s kidneys are failing, plus he fell last week. He let EMS examine him but refused to go to the doctor.

I had to put my favorite cat to sleep because his gallbladder was blocked.

My son told our powers that be that we have too many animals so I am having to find new homes for them (this is difficult because a) most of them are elderly, b) my son is the one who has brought most of them home and insisted we keep them, and c) they are the only critters in our house who seem to like me).

My father is losing his vision, my mother is declining rapidly from Parkinson’s and they will be moving near me sometime in the next six months.

And my daughter is gone for a full month at camp.

On top of that, my meds aren’t working but I can’t get in to see my doctor until next week (I made the appointment 2 weeks ago) because we go to the local base and all the docs have been shipped off to the Middle East or to Norfolk (BRAC is still going on).

However, the truck is running okay (knock on wood), and my husband’s nephrologist just opened a brand new dialysis center about 5 blocks from our house. I also understand that our governor just passed a state law that disabled military vets can get their property taxes waived (now I have to find out how to do that). If so we will be able to pay for the dialysis my husband will soon be needing.

I am sure things will get better somehow, but I am not certain how yet.

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

OK, can we promise to have a happy thread after this one?

@Darwin: Hang in there dear. I wish I had a magic solution for you. I don’t pray, but I just might for you. Good thoughts at minimum. ((hugs))

@Darwin that’s quite a load. I really hope things get better for you. I know they will.

I’m going through it right now, though if you want a specific “point” then there have been lower points in the last 7 months than the one I am in today. But it is in fact the same problem, and it’s not been solved yet.

The lowest point in my life before that was several years ago, and even though the objective problem was not as big as the one I’m facing today, the way it affected me was more profound. I would cry day and night, thought I was going crazy, I could not eat or sleep, I generally couldn’t cope. In that sense, yes, I am glad it happened because it gave me strength to deal with everything that’s been happening the last 4 years. I don’t think I would have been calm enough to cope with my daughter’s operation for example, if it hadn’t been for that previous experience. And of course the much worse strife she’s been through since then.

@Darwin. I’m very sorry to hear of all the difficulties you have faced and are facing and my heart goes out to you. I wish you the very best and I will keep you in my thoughts.

@cprevite. I know what it feels like to experience multiple deaths in short order (my father and my only 2 surviving grandparents dying within 2 years of each other) so I know how difficult a time this must be for you also. All the best to you and wishing you much good fortune and happiness now and in the future.

@evelyns_pet_zebra. I’m glad you didn’t either because it has been my pleasure to meet you and commune with you here on Fluther. You’re good people.

@Darwin Whew, that’s a lot. Life can really suck. In FL you can go on the property appraisers official site for your county and there is information on how to get your property taxes waived, or there might be a phone number on your bill or look up the property appraiser in your govt pages of your phone book. It might be called property assessor in your state.

I have had a few low points.

One big one was when I broke up with a long time boyfriend. It shook me to the core physically and emotionally. What I learned from the experience was how to be a good friend. My friends were amazing. They came to visit to make sure I was not alone, listened to me endlessly, and shared similar experiences they had gone through. It is good I did not marry him, we would have been misrable.

I suffered from a chronic illness for 8 years, which even though I have few symptoms now, I still am psychologically and physically affected. Doctors dismissed me for years, or if they listened tried treatments and tests that did not work. I had a theory what was wrong, but no one agreed. I actually happened upon an antibiotic that made me feel almost 100% better, but I would get sick once I stopped taking it. Docs would not prescribe it for several weeks. It seemed obvious to me it might be I was undermedicating, like when you stop taking an antibiotic too soon. I spent a lot of time crying, anxious, and in pain daily. Eventually, I had an exploratory surgery that basically proved what I had said all along! But the surgery seems to have caused some other complications. I did eventually find a doctor who gave me IV medication and I have been 90% better for several years now, many problems have completely reversed. Insurance, of course, did not cover all of it, I think I spent around $4000. I don’t know what’s worse, that I suffered for years when I knew what was wrong and it was treatable? Or, that I suffered in pain all of those years.

I do think I learned a lot through these troubles, might actually say it makes me a better person. I also appreciate simple things more than I used to, I am grateful every day I am not in pain. But that crap about being glad for having gone through hard times, I would have rather not gone through any of it.

Everyone goes through hard times, there will be positives that come from each experience. I guess learning how to deal with it and roll with the punches is the trick I guess? I’m still learning.

The worst moment of my life was watching someone I loved walk out of my life. However, they came back under different circumstances and looking back, as horrible as it was for a few months, so far it has worked out for the best. Providing it stays this way I am fine.

NO.

The lowest point in my life was between the ages 16–23 because these were the years I’ve gone through being a drug dependent, getting pregnant and was forced to marry (not really being pregnant because I was the happiest person as soon as I found out, but the circumstances that went along with being one), in a terrible marriage, jobless and was raising a kid, almost getting raped…sigh. I better stop. This is getting quite depressing for me.

To answer how did I get out of it – I think everything comes with aging and maturity. You learn to do the right things and make the right decisions eventually.

Was I glad that things went the way they did? All I can say is “everything happens for a reason.”

My theory about it all is this:

You can laugh or you can cry, but if you cry your nose hurts.

In other words, look for the good always. It may not solve your problems but it will help you get through each day. And maybe the next day will be better. If not, then go back to looking for the good.

Well, nothing really seems that bad now after reading these posts.

So I will just say that any difficulties I have had in life with family or school or work all helped to make me stronger. They helped me to gain perspective on life that helped me to see that there are always things to be grateful for and there are always ways to find a little bit of light amidst the darkness, even if you have to close your eyes and imagine a candle.

Yeah, I can’t compete with some of the stuff already on here… but I just had a bad break-up with a guy. He broke my heart, and for 3 years after, I slept around, got drunk, did whatever recreational drugs I pleased, contracted some stds, and was a general ass… THEN, I decided to chuck it all and move a few hours away and start over. 7 months after I did that, I met my husband and he gave me a lot to live right for.

My lowest point is when I became a casualty of the recession and from that point on everything else just fell apart. I lost my job in the beginning of the new year, then lost my apartment which I loved, moved in with family only to find out they were facing foreclosure and eventually lost the place, weeks later my grandmother passed away. I had to move in with my mother in another state hence leaving the city I called home as well as leaving behind family/friends. I thought this would be my fresh start only to have to deal with my mother’s constant “you can’t stay here forever” “this isnt a permanent place” “I didnt want you to come here” as she let me know it was my stepfather, her husband, who was there with welcoming arms. Due to the recession finding work was impossible, and in the past I’d get calls and such from my applications. This time, nothing. My mom would constantly remind me on a weekly basis that I had to go, I’d wake up in the morning to find a bus ticket under the door and it was my stepfather who would come to my “rescue” and I’d be allowed to stay. Sad isnt it? As a child, myself as well as my siblings, took care of our mom… when she was sick, drunk or high. And one would think, that a daughter/son in their lowest point in life would receive some comfort from a parent. Nope. My mom has let her resentment be shown. I’m still here in her home and pray every day that I will find a way out.

Its bad enough that she still drinks and when she does can be so hurtful, but when you feel like there is nothing that you can do to getting your life back and having to stay under someone’s roof who obviously doesnt want you there is very hard.

During a negative relationship I’d gotten so wrapped up in my partner’s depression that I started feeling like my own life was pretty much over as I’d known it. I no longer felt young, attractive, talented or capable of independence. I had thoughts of, “who else is going to want me now?” and I kept staying with that person.

Years later I got a good push from old friends to take action and try to start my life again by going back to work and moving out. It was the best thing I did and it took less than a year for me to find my old self and much missed confidence. I look back now and can’t believe I had settled with so little for so long.