Which Was The Worst Time In Your Life and Why?

[HollyTheColliegirl]

I'm in high school now and I would say my worst time was most definitely middle school. It wasn't cool to be smart, kind, or mature. I actually tried in my classes, and the other kids hated me for my love of reading. I was picked on a lot, particularly by boys. Kids are at their absolutely worst in my opinion when they're in middle school. I still get teased, but its occasional and I've learned to ignore it. Who needs them when you have authors like Elizabeth Gaskell at your fingertips?

 

A whole lot of bad things happened in my life right at the end of middle school... If you are curious or have a similar situation, drop me a PM and we can talk.

Edited March 15, 2013 by HollyTheColliegirl

[HeatherMarie]

I can't decide between middle school and now (real job, adult-ness).

 

Middle school was... horrible. My parents were getting divorced, both my grandparents were sick (like, slowly-dying sick), I was diagnosed with depression but resisted drugs for a long time, I started cutting myself frequently, attempted suicide 12 times within the span of two years, and eventually nearly ended up in the hospital from anorexia. Despite all this, I managed to come out as lesbian to my parents and group of friends with very little issue at all, so.... Guess that's one good thing?

 

Adulthood has been.... challenging. My diagnosis is now bipolar and anxiety, and it's basically crippled me, job-wise. Between how many days I end up calling in because the anxiety or depression is just consuming me, and the constant crying spells at work, I doubt *any* "normal" job would keep me. I work at a non-profit organization dedicated to employing and training people with physical and mental disabilities. .... I don't kid myself, I know that's the only reason I'm still there after 5 years. Two years ago, with my doctor's help, I admitted myself to a mental hospital (not the first time). It was only for 3 nights, but... Yeah.

(Oh, and don't get me started about the one actual relationship I've had as an adult. She completely wrecked me. We were actually great until the last few months, when everything hit the fan.)

 

So...... Life sucks. lol

Edited March 16, 2013 by Marie19R

[Plant]

I was bullied in school, but there were varying degrees of it. Elementary school was tolerable, middle school got a bit worse...and then there was high school. High school deserves an honorary mention because of the intense...scars people left behind that still haunt me to this day.

 

I was an outcast. I did not fit into social norms, nor did I give a for them. I lost all of my old friends, people whom I'd come to trust and love. There was only a few people I actually got along with in HS, but the more that I think about it...I simply tolerated them. I did not connect with any of my new friends. I was bullied daily. I went home, daily, infuriated and sad.

 

Being put down five days of every week for four years really does things to your head.

 

By the time I reached HS, I was mentally and physically drained. I've got clinical depression, and I was (and still am) taking medication for it at the time. They did nothing. Told my doctor 'bout it. Got my medicine upped. Still did nothing.

 

I did not actively participate in anything for four years. I brought home mostly F's. Because of this, I lacked enough credits to graduate. As a result, I epically failed HS...but took classes to get my GED which was a much better solution than having nothing at all. Gettin' my GED was easy, compared to seventeen years of constant abuse.

 

Reading some of the other comments above, I realize that it could have been worse. Misery is misery. Some of us cope with it rather well, but I am not one of those people. HS was traumatic in such a way that it impedes my way of thinking (and actions) to this day. Now I'm stuck doing something that I don't necessarily like, but continue doing it because I don't want to - no, I can't change.

 

...Ugh. Long sob story.

[tjsweepers]

As much as i hated High school, the time right after the 2004 tsunami will always and forever be the worst time in my life. I was with one of the first helio crews that started helping... and clearing the bodies.

It is was also one of the best in terms of feeling like i belonged, doing something that made a difference and made some very good and close friends.

 

[SaberLily]

When I was around five, my friend killed herself. I slowly gained schizophrenia because of it. It was horrible, I was even sent to a mental asylum for a while because of it until I was pulled out. I only lost the voices about... a year ago, maybe. It was like Hell, really...

[MysticTiger]

Different parts of my life were terrible but for different reasons.

 

Senior Year of High School was basically the the top of the worse years in School. I suffered from extreme Social Anxiety. The kind where, if I seen someone I knew across the hallway, I would have a panic attack just at the idea that they would spot me and say hello. During Senior year, all of my friends just kind of drifted away from me. When I would go to meet them in the hallways, they'd all 'need to be somewhere else'. My grades dropped dramatically. Not because I was neglecting school, but because for some ungodly reason, Senior year meant a lot of homework. And I really didn't do homework. I could pass a test with flying colors, but homework, I completely forgot about half the time. So, I ended up having to take after school extra classes. Before senior year even began, I was removed from a Criminalistics class (I had five teacher recommendations for) because my councilor wanted to give someone else he knew the spot in the class. The ONE class I wanted to take, I wasn't allowed to. I also was forced to take Gym Class, which led to my weight gain (up until that point I had very high metabolism- which was messed up when I was forced to exert my body more then I needed to) and even more anxiety problems (Forced to wear bathing suits?! ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME. Even with my SAD mostly gone now I can't even wear bathing suits). My teachers, for the most part, were all jerks. I just couldn't win.

 

This year has probably been the worst year in my out-of-school life. I had to quit my last job because not only did my boss insult my work (which I was proud of) but my appearance and my family. Not to mention she was a racist bigot, which drove me absolutely crazy. I remember her glaring at me the entire day when I wore my Pray for Japan bracelet. I was actually surprised she didn't tell me to take it off. So, I got a new job. Which has been just a disaster. First of all, I hate my job. Hate, hate, HAAAATE it. I am currently paid the least amount of money i've been paid at any job, yet I currently am doing close to the most amount of work i've done at a job. My boss, after months of telling me she was going to train me for this position, decided to train someone else without even bothering to tell me. She then proceeded to give me the absolute worst hours a person at that job has ever endured. Seriously, my co-workers comments were "Who did you tick off to get those hours?" and "That is seriously just cruel." and "I would just suddenly come down with something and call in". The other day, I came into work sick and was told I WASN'T WORKING HARD ENOUGH and then got written up for not working hard enough. I suffered from Burnout Syndrome (the 9th sign of Burnout is extremely accurate " Their view of life narrows to only seeing in the present time, while their life turns to a series of mechanical functions") for several months before i'm pretty sure my body couldn't take it anymore and just shut down mentally. Every day I go there, I feel like i'm having a mental breakdown. I want to scream and throw things and sometimes I get overly angry, which if you knew me in real life isn't like me at all. I come home every night and cry my eyes out. Sometimes I don't even make it home, I start crying in my car or on the way to my car. The customers are EXTREMELY rude. Which is nothing new since I have worked in Retail for 10 years now, but unlike before where it was one or two, this is basically everyone. My boss the other day denied my request to change my availability. I requested that, out of all of the open availability I had, that I wanted the last two hours on Sunday off. I just didn't want to be scheduled the last two hours on one day out of ALL OF THE HOURS IN THE WEEK I WAS AVAILABLE. And she denied my request. I'm just done with this job. I'm going to start putting out an application and hope someone out there needs someone like me.

 

Wow, that was long. Haha.

[Moeru]

Middle school was certainly the worst, for a huge host of reasons, but I do believe a big part of it was that my mom was going through not only menopause but was having PTSD from her father's death (40 years before!) that she had never grieved properly--she was having breakdowns and such but never communicated anything. My dad was out of the country a lot on business, and when he was home he was very tense and anxious about his own job, and took that out on us (especially me). I was going through puberty and rejecting Christianity, and besides being a new kid and outcast at my school, besides being of an artistic temperament AND gay, I basically stopped trying at school (except at the classes I enjoyed) because I figured, what's the point? So I stopped "achieving" as my parents put it. This led to countless, countless hours of family "arguments" (screaming in my face while i sat silently) and being further isolated from my peers as my parents tried to take away my 'privileges' in order to punish me into working harder at school.

 

(Protip: this did not work at all)

 

Around that time of course, with all this going on, I became suicidal and depressed, but when I told my parents (because I still believed the PSAs on TV that said "If you are having these feelings, tell an adult"), they told me "you are not depressed". So right then at age 13 I realized that they are not going to help me, and they do not care about my wellbeing, and if I am going to get through anything in life it is going to be on my own.

 

In fact, 15 years later that is still the case. I have had 15 years of on and off depression and suicidal thoughts, but I am in therapy and have made a lot of progress in working through the years and years and years of buried resentment and anger and loss.

 

Most importantly of all, around age 12 my erstwhile hobby of drawing became a daily necessity, and I started carrying a sketchbook in my bag literally everywhere I went, every day. I didn't stop drawing, and I started drawing things without censoring myself-- I drew monsters and flesh and knives and flowers and animals and melting boxes and whatever I wanted.

 

That spiritual release became my major in college, and it is now one of my jobs, I am a tattoo apprentice and I love it in a way that people talk about their new baby. It's hard to describe the deep, calming satisfaction I have when giving a piece of my own art onto someone's skin so they can keep it forever. It is real soul-to-soul communication with another living being. It is acceptance. It is real peace.

 

If I hadn't gone through a very difficult period in my early teenagerhood (like everybody does, I think!) then I would not have found that art is my best method of releasing what's in my soul.

Edited March 17, 2013 by Moeru

[orrrangeee]

I was bullied in grade five... That pretty much ruined the school for me.

[Lady Artemis]

I'm only a youngish adult (don't really want to give my age) but the worst time of my life so far had to have been freshman year of high school. I fell in with the wrong crowd at school and, well, got into some unsavory situations and did some rather illegal things. Eventually my parents found out what was going on and there was heartbreak and turmoil all around. Sophomore year wasn't any better, because I was severely depressed and didn't care about anything. Because of that I almost flunked all of my classes.

Edited September 7, 2015 by Lady Artemis

[Anak]

Well, now, really. That's high school. I haven't lived for that long so this is literally the worst thing that's happened in my life.

[Arwen17]

I've only been out of college for two years now, but I've already suffered deep depression similar to what I went through in middle school. It's the isolation again, but without the ostracization that took place in middle school.

 

middle school = surrounded by people your own age, but they completely ostracize you, so you're very lonely and hurt.

 

life after college = surrounded by people far younger and far older than you. There's no one your own age to hang out with or they're all married or alcoholic/drug-user/pregnant-single-mothers. You aren't being ostracized by your peer group like in middle school, your peer group simply doesn't exist. The "married" or the "people with kids" groups ostracize anyone who isn't married or doesn't have kids.

 

I've come out of the deep depression I was in a year ago, but it's still not completely gone.

I don't want to date men who are 10-20 years older than me. It's not much fun hanging out with women who are my mother's age and have no clue about technology. It's no fun to hang out with high school kids who still rely on their parents for everything. They're still kids while I'm an adult. And I'm still a kid compared to the adults my mother's age.

I'm hoping by the time I'm 30 I'll finally match the typical age of the people living in this city. But it may still not matter because they'll all be married and have kids at that point and I'll still get cut out of the social loop because of that.

Many young women seem to deliberately have kids on their own just so they can be part of the social loop because they can't find anyone to marry or date.

 

In conclusion, there's less cruelty compared to middle school, but there's 1000x more isolation.

 

And trust me, I try and try to meet as many people as possible thru all kinds of venues. But it's so hard to get them to agree to hang out. They're always busy or already have their set group of friends and have no interest in letting anyone else join. Are there still "clique-like" behaviors in adulthood? You bet there are!

And the instant they get married or have kids, they don't want anything to do with you anymore. It's all about being a couple and only doing things with other couples.

Edited September 9, 2015 by Arwen17

[Whirlaway]

Middle School girls are the worst.

[Aqub]

The worst time of my life was probably around my 14th birthday. August is always a sad time because it's the end of summer, but that time was the worst. I felt so depressed, bored, lonely, etc, but I didn't want to do anything or interact with anyone. This ended up being cured by something strange: my grandma ending up in the hospital needing a major surgery, and the following month that my mom and I spent at her house taking care of her. This situation gave me someone else to worry about and the chaos and responsibility basically left me with no time to feel bad for myself anymore. 

[Gryphonic]

For stress-misery, about two years ago when a terrible job kept driving me into crying breakdowns, almost every day.  For sheer isolation and depression (and frequent bipolar irrational angers), all of the last 4-5 years, continuing to worsen and including right now.  I want to vent tonight, have been wanting to for a couple of weeks in the Emotional Support thread, but when I sit down to write it out it all just looks stupid and pathetic and I hate myself more.

Welp, in the space of typing that I went from starting to cry to ****ing pissed.  I'm leaving before I break something and wake my neighbor.

[Nagapie]

Both my upper comprehensive school (middle school) and upper secondary school (high school) times were pretty bad, but I decided to go with high school for this one. Like many people in this topic, I got bullied around the middle school age. It made me depressed and angry, but back then I could still stay highly functional and keep my grades very high.

 

High school is where my past baggage actually developed into a full blown existential crisis and a crippling social phobia with panic attacks. I sought help sometime on my second year of high school and only got anti-depressants and sedatives out of it, no actual therapy. Every week I spoke to some cold nurse who just nodded her head. I never thought there'd be an easy fix for my problems, but actually seeing the quality of treatment I received made me grow resentful towards the system. I dropped out of high school on the year I was supposed to graduate and just played an MMORPG from dawn to dusk every day. I stopped taking my medication and gave up on going to talk to the nurse as doing all these things just made me feel worse every time. 

I had reached the rock bottom and in the end, I realized I was the only one who could help myself. All this time spent being completely isolated and meaningless motivated me to bounce back and build myself a better life that would feel worth living. I returned to finish my high school via evening classes and got into game development studies after that.

 

I am now much stronger than I used to be, in large part thanks to my experiences and all the thinking they made me go through.

[Arwen17]

Five years after graduating college, I'm still struggling as an adult to figure out what I want to do with my career. I'm looking for my 4th professional job now and I expect to hate it as much as the last three jobs. School (K-12 and college) was FUN. Work is NEVER fun. I never, ever struggled with life's purpose until after I graduated college. You'll always have people in your life treating you like a pile of dog poop they scraped off their shoe (other students, coworkers, or bosses), but it was bearable as long as I was succeeding and knew what I wanted from life. I hope I'll know what the heck I want to do by 30 maybe. But these past 5 years of suffering exceeds anything I experienced as a kid, and being a kid was extremely, extremely painful, but I never contemplated suicide for 5 solid years as I have as an adult.

The only benefit to being an adult vs being a kid is having access to money. But money equals misery if you hate every job you take. So other than sheer survival, it stops being much of a prize.

You think school is difficult and boring? Just wait until you enter the world of work. Teachers bend over backwards to try to make schoolwork interesting and fun. Employers never do that. And if you aren't good enough or fast enough, they won't hesitate to throw you out on the pavement in the blink of an eye. Teachers will work with you until you figure it out. Employers will not. They will exterminate you because you're costing them money by being incompetent and useless, and they can always hire someone with more experience to easily replace you.