•  Scrumpf_Dabogy   ( @Scrumpf_Dabogy@beehaw.org ) 
    5•1 year ago

    I was laid off from my first real job out of college. The owner laid off about 30% of the staff and did not consult managers in the decision, so it was not really merit based, basically bad luck.

    I stayed positive and got a new job in less than 3 months. It had no benefits, but paid better. I was replacing a woman who really needed benefits and thats why she wanted to leave. After 2 months or so, she couldnt find anything and asked for her job back. So I once again got fired for no fault of my own.

    That hit me hard and I was unemployed and horribly depressed for 6 months.

    I survived that time with amazing support from my girlfriend. We burned through my savings then most of hers. She stuck with me through it all. I finally got a very low level job in state government.

    It turned out to be a great change. Better insurance allowed me to get medicated for ADHD and shots for my allergies. I got promoted over and over. I’m doing great now, but it would have been the end of me if not for my girlfriend, who is obviously my wife now.

  •  albatross   ( @albatross@beehaw.org ) 
    5•1 year ago

    In a lot of ways, my lowest point was loss from having a severe mental health crisis and losing my mind, my beloved partner of 15 years, my job (admittedly job stress was part of total breakdown, so maybe this was a bonus??), my “I’m a serious artist” hobby, my savings (now in debt), and most of my friends. 3 mos later, my best friend my cat was hit by a car, partly due to my own housing instability which racked me with guilt.

    1. BUT my true lowest point internal suffering wise was 7 years earlier, when I became deeply depressed and freaked out fearing I’d lose all the things I ended up losing for reals! That actually hurt a lot worse inside than when I actually had to cope with what I feared most.

    2. AND despite the loss, when I was 22, I probably still would have traded for my physical post-loss life circumstances. Yet I don’t think of my life at 22 as a “low point”, I was just used to having a lot less.

    Realizing both (1) and (2) is one of the things that help me to get through the “lowest point”. They reminded me that a lot of “lowest point” is perspective. It didn’t like magically fix anything, the pain from loss is/was still very raw, persistent and real. But it helped me to a little bit see that it was the gift of having things that made a low point when I didn’t have them anymore.

      •  albatross   ( @albatross@beehaw.org ) 
        4•1 year ago

        I don’t have a pat retrospective on this: when you have things you love, and things change, its only human to get hung up on that and feel very low. At the same time, starting to understand a little that its the having of things that makes the losing of things suck (“lowest point”) makes a small but ongoing difference.

        As to the present, I have a job again, live in a beautiful place, healed some relationships and made some new friends, etc. I still can’t bring myself to get a new cat lol. Guess I’m a one-life-one-cat sorta dude 😂. Its not the same as my “old life”, and I still desperately miss it at times.

        I suppose my takeaway from all this is: lowest point is all about perspective. You can’t just take a new perspective and feel stoked when things are hard, but remembering that its a perspective can help when you’re looking into what is to you the bowels of hell.