Home→Forums→Tough Times→the ‘all is lost’ moment
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December 12, 2018 at 7:10 pm #269123NParticipant
I’m having something of an ‘all is lost’ moment (referring to the moment in a story where the protagonist is furthest from their goals). A huge chunk of this I have no doubt is grief. I recently lost my mom, it’s been a little over a month now. But looking back it’s just the ultimate heartbreak in a collection of several
In 2016 I’d failed one of the first classes that I took going toward my career, proceeded to move out on my own but couldn’t find work to pay for rent and much less pay for school, spent the whole 2017 at home to go to school and in the meantime drive my siblings around because they didn’t want to learn to drive which still stands now. In the midst of all of that I was going to school and managed to finally graduate this summer, just as my mom started to get worse as I was getting into applying for some jobs to finally get me in my career. But I couldn’t get any jobs or internships and I stayed once she really started getting worse and became her caretaker. Then in November she was gone. And now I feel shattered.
Because not only did it seem damn near impossible to achieve anything I’d set out for in the past couple years (I mean don’t even get me started on trying to date cause that was miserable too), now I lose my mom. I knew she was sick, she’d been for a long time. But she was the one person I wanted to see me ‘make it.’ She was my biggest supporter and did anything in her power to help me get there. I owed it to her and wanted her to say she was proud of me. To see me do well, to be there when I got married and had kids, and I wanted her to have her ‘the kids are alright‘ moment to know what she did as our mother paid off…but now she’s gone. And I get that she’s still watching and her spirit still lives, I’ve heard all that, but it doesn’t it make it easier that she isn’t here physically beside me on the couch like we always were
So now I feel hopeless. I mean people try to point out an eventual bright side, that as miserable that it is that she’s gone, I can move forward. My dad and sisters are doing alright and once we can get adjusted I can go forward, which is what I want to do because I still feel like for as much of my biggest fan and support she was I won’t let her down. But I also feel like I can’t expect to do any better. Expectations and trying so hard to achieve so much in the amount of time I gave myself was apparently too much to ask for. And I know I can’t compare but I look up to how successful my friends are, they’re dope and they deserve it. But I can’t help but feel like if they could why can’t I? If they could get what they ask and hope for by asking and hoping for it with the same amount of work, why can’t I? Why not me? And why do people keep pushing the idea that you can’t have great expectations? Like when they say you can’t have things when you want them…well isn’t that being hopeful? So how am I supposed to be positive and hopeful, but not hope to achieve my dreams with enough time to enjoy them? I can always get what I hope for eventually but eventually could be seventy years from now. What if I get sick before then? Anything could happen before that. So…how could I be hopeful. This is my ‘all is lost’ moment. Which weirdly makes me feel better because in film writing its the protagonist’s greatest moment for character development. But it’s damn sure hard to be in it without knowing how to get out and what to do next
December 13, 2018 at 8:18 am #269147AnonymousGuestDear N:
I am sorry you lost your mom.
I re-read your posts from your “feeling lonely and alone” of Oct 2017, when your mother was sick, a few years at that point. You wrote then: “My moms okay to talk to but she’s always taken the ‘just don’t worry about it/ just be happy/ stop being sad’ approach. So even though I can talk to her about what I’m thinking it’s usually pretty short… I feel like she doesn’t really listen to me… she doesn’t so much talk to us but rather just tells us what to do. She’s interrupted and changed the subject but part of me thinks she’s not being malicious, she just won’t focus on what she’s thinking about… even my dads started to be like that. He’ll definitely listen but instead of recognizing there’s something that upsets me they just wonder ‘why focus on it when there’s so much else you can be thankful for?’ It’s helped a little bit but it’s just not that easy”-
It makes sense to me, that she was not malicious when she didn’t listen to you, when she interrupted you and changed the subject you were talking about. I suppose when she felt distressed this is what she did, change the subject, distract, focus on doing rather than thinking, telling you what to do, instead of engaging in a conversation with you about what you thought and felt.
It seems to me that both your parents figured, if you don’t talk about it, it won’t bother you. Problem is, if not talked, if not expressed, if no one listens, things that bother you don’t go away. Instead they fester and grow. And a person not listened to, interrupted, shut down… gets angry.
I don’t think it is possible to not be angry when you are interrupted and not heard, not be taken seriously. I don’t think you can help it even if the person not listening to you is not being malicious, even if the person is sick and otherwise occupied… you still need to be listened to.
Sometimes people who are not listened to end up talking a whole lot, it being the urge to talk until someone does listen. At other times, maybe a person withdraws and becomes very quiet, having given up.
“the all is lost moment”- what if it turns into a something-is-found-moment, a sort of something important that you need to say, and be heard saying it, a sentence. I don’t know. What do you think?
anita
December 14, 2018 at 4:07 am #269247NParticipantYeah there’s that. But not that dad sort of knows what I’m talking about now in terms of not feeling like you can change anything and all you can do is talk about it. But I’m talking more broad picture instead of being unheard. I know people telling me to be hopeful actually isn’t a good thing and not helpful, but it’s not helpful because I don’t know how to be hopeful about anything. I want to think tang after getting so low it can’t possibly get any worse, but having had to deal with all this stuff and things ending up getting worse in general, why would I think it would end up any different, and then that makes me feel like a crap person because in the meantime all my friends are happy and in love and working hard and living their lives, and I don’t want to talk to them. I feel like if I was such a good friend I should be able to deal when they get excited about something, but all I can think is I’m tired of there only being just enough good luck for everyone but me. I don’t want to have to celebrate things with them because I don’t feel celebratory, just like I don’t want to bum them out with my misery because they shouldn’t have to feel miserable
December 14, 2018 at 6:46 am #269261AnonymousGuestDear N:
You wrote, “all my friends are happy and in love”. We think that when we are so miserable. It seems like everyone is happy because we are so miserable.
I think that you have been miserable for too long.
Back to your revealing thread of Oct 2017: “I’ve never been in an honest relationship before. So I’m not used to being open to anyone or reliant on anyone, which some have told me makes me seem standoffish, insincere and cynical. Plus intimacy is something I’ve never had to deal with, even in terms of just personal space. Plus I’ve become a bit disenchanted with people. My standards are too high or something.. I just recently try to handle things on my own and just keep to myself about what I’m thinking… I’ve been told this before that I should talk to an actual therapist, but as my folks don’t believe in them (my dad isn’t necessarily on the side of ‘psychobabble’)”-
A good psychotherapist is what you need, one that will not engage in psychobabble.
We are social animals, we can’t be mentally healthy without healthy connections with others, intimate connections where you share your thoughts and feelings as-they-are, honestly, openly, at least with one other person who will let you finish your sentences, who will listen to you empathetically and respectfully.
Keeping to yourself (“handle things on my own and just keep to myself about what I’m thinking”) was all you could do at home because no one adequately listened to you, so it was a solution, but not the long term kind of solution. Short term, yes, not long term.
If you want to talk, or communicate here on your thread more at length (maybe there will be some help in if for you), type away anything you’d like and/ or answer my following questions regarding to the quote I included in this post:
1. What do you mean by not having had dealt with intimacy, “even in terms of just personal space“?
2. What standards were you referring to in “My standards are too high or something”?
anita
December 14, 2018 at 8:32 am #269275PeterParticipantHi N
I think you might find the book ‘Wild’ by Cheryl Strayed interesting.
To heal she needed to come to terms with her loss and learn a better way to nurture/mother herself.
As you mentioned in the ‘hero journey’ it is at the point when all seems loss that the moment of transformation is realized. This moment is not usually made conscious by forcing it but by a kind of calm assertiveness/intentional – doing by not doing (not attaching one sens of self as being what you do)
Cheryl Strayed needed to challenge herself physically in order ‘detach’ herself from her thoughts and experiences (she no longer labeled herself as being her thoughts and experience) and so gained a deeper perspective. In that moment though everything was the same everything changed.
There are many methods of completing such journeys. I think the key is mindfulness, skillful detachment (you are not what you do, think or feel in the moment) and being open to possibilities.
December 14, 2018 at 9:16 pm #269343NParticipantI think I have too. Which is why I’m taking this all so hard in the first place. I mean I might be taking a lot of setbacks personally, but there have been a lot, and now this heartache. It’s like a downhill spiral and this is the pit. But I do have a therapist, and she’s been helpful trying to get me to say everything in my head
I know keeping to myself isn’t the best but it feels like I’m running out of people who could understand. And I know my friends are happy because that’s what they seem to focus on the most. Like me and three of my friends went on vacation in August and it was all new jobs and wedding pinterest boards and gushing about boyfriends and new apartments and houses and stuff. And I just don’t feel like I relate that much to my friends. They’ve tried to reach out and I applaud them for trying to be nice, especially since a couple of them have lost a parent too, they know what I’m dealing with. But I don’t think they know what it’s like to be all the way in my situation, and I honestly can’t expect anyone to understand because they haven’t dealt with all of these things, and if they have, not at the same time. I’m better at answering questions because even I don’t know how to put how I’m feeling into words, but I can try to any time to vent. Because at the very least I think an unbiased opinion helps
- Intimacy in all meanings of the word. Emotionally, physically, all of that. I was in relationships in title, meaning the ones I’ve had they called me their girlfriend but they didn’t care much about how I felt to really listen and understand where I’m coming from with problems. And because if that during that time, a long time ago now, I thought more about how to defend what I thought Instead of their rebuttals to what I thought. I do the same with friends. Because I don’t want to be a buzzkill I don’t really rely on them when I’m feeling down, just when I’m neutral or feeling okay. But by that same token that means my family gets the brunt of the downside and i know they get kind of annoyed with it so I get it out in spurts and then try to stay cool and collected most of the time. I think that’s what the problem with my being single actually is. All the extra stuff is just the extra stuff. But over time I’ve learned how to take people how they are at any moment, but over time I’ve gotten afraid to let other people expect the same from me
- I don’t know. That just seems to be the response I get from other people when I’m specifically talking about romantic relationships. Whenever they ask me how dating is going they’ve gotten to a point where they think that I’m too picky. And admittedly I do turn down guys pretty quickly and I am really picky with my type, but it’s because I waited this long. I for damn sure am not going to waste any time on someone I absolutely know wouldn’t work out. I’m playing for keeps
December 15, 2018 at 5:53 am #269353AnonymousGuestDear N:
The advantage of being in the pit (“It’s like a downhill spiral and this is the pit”) is that you can relearn about people and life, relearn a whole lot. I am still in this very process.
An example of relearning in my life: you wrote that you know that your friends are happy because during a summer vacation, they were “gushing about boyfriends and new apartments and houses and stuff”- the happiness you witnessed was their talking about relationships that in practice may be full of trouble a lot of the time, but during the vacation, they talk and get excited talking. See the difference?
Same with apartments and houses, the happiness you saw was in the talking. Are they happy when they pay the bills, when the mortgage interest goes up unexpectedly or when they hear their neighbors playing loud music etc.? The happiness you saw was in the talking/ the gushing.
And now for the rest of your recent post, you wrote: “I was in relationships in title, meaning.. they called me their girlfriend but they didn’t care much about how I felt to really listen and understand where I’m coming from with problems… I don’t want to be a buzzkill. I don’t really rely on them when I’m feeling down, just when I’m neutral or feeling okay”- we relive our childhoods. In context of your parents, your title was daughter, but they did not “really listen to me… instead of recognizing there’s something that upsets me they just wonder ‘why focus on it…” (quote from last year thread).
So you interacted with your parents when you were neutral or okay, not when you felt down, best you could; you adjusted to them, and you behave ever since the same adjusted way with others.
You wrote about your family members, currently: “they get kind of annoyed with it so I get it out in spurts and then try to stay cool and collected most of the time”- what you shut down and put away, your genuine feelings that annoyed your parents and were a buzzkill to them, those feelings don’t stay put away. It is in their nature to come “out in spurts”, to escape their prison from time to time.
Regarding guys, or dating possibilities, I have no doubt you need a man who will listen to you, who will be interested in hearing you, not annoyed. A man with whom you can share all your feelings without locking away the potentially annoying/ buzzkills.
Problem is, even if you do come across a man who wants to hear the locked-in feelings, it will be very difficult for you to let them out in an easy flow. You are too used to push them down and … watch them helplessly coming out in spurts, like magma erupting from a volcano, the pressure having to ease.
So it will take effort and practice to express all, to not be afraid to do so, with a man interested in listening.
anita
December 16, 2018 at 8:58 pm #269555NParticipantI know it takes work and I know no one is truly ecstatic about the mundane, but most people would rather boring and mundane as opposed to sad or negative things. And they’ll talk about the things they go through too, like whenever they have disagreements or their job is pissing them off or something, but having more good days or boring days is better than nothing, and there’s disagreements but they’re workoutable and that’s better than having someone beat you or threaten to leave you. Having someone you can talk to about anything and even if they don’t agree you can go back and forth about opinions until they get to a point where everything makes sense. Nothing is ever 100% amazing and that’s not what I’m looking for. Just that even on the worst of days there’s a balance of the good
I think too that everything I’ve been feeling has been negative for so long I’m starting to annoy myself. So I’m okay to let them get annoyed at me for what I’m saying and thinking. I don’t want to be this negative and I don’t want to feel this down. I hate that I’ve taken everything that’s happening and I’m probably just blowing it out of proportion but I just want my own good luck. I want to feel like I’m moving forward and the work I put in is paying off, or something. And even if I turn out to be one of those people who don’t end up with that much luck, I just don’t want any more bad luck. I’d rather nothing at all than disappointments and heart breaking
That’s what I was hoping for, and I did know that trying to be open and candid was going to be really difficult. But I feel like if I do that from jump street it would make that obvious early on whether or not they would listen and try to understand and make it easier to keep doing it. And it’s always been pretty wary for me to do so hopefully it would be moderately smooth from there. It’s just getting there, and trying to feel like it’s even possible to meet that person
December 17, 2018 at 6:10 am #269599AnonymousGuestDear N:
I didn’t understand your recent post. Let’s take the first couple of sentences in the first paragraph:
“I know it takes work”- what is it, specifically?
“I know no one is truly ecstatic about the mundane, but most people would rather boring and mundane as opposed to sad or negative things”-
earlier you wrote: “Because I don’t want to be a buzzkill … so I get it out in spurts and then try to stay cool and collected most of the time”- the spurts you mentioned, are those “boring and mundane” you mentioned in the second sentence, or is it the “negative things”?
In other words, what is the nature of the buzzkill you referred to earlier?
anita
December 17, 2018 at 11:10 am #269695NParticipantI was referring to when you’d said that they were just talking about the happy parts instead of about the reality. Yeah everyone gushes about the good but my friends have known each other since middle school so if it’s bad enough they’ll talk about it. But that means you can assume that it’s fine. No one likes paying bills but when you can afford them that means you have a good job. Relationships could get bad if you have to tell the person to do the same things over and over again, but that also means you have someone to make good times with just as well. I’m just saying that nothing is roses all the time but it’s better than nothing but mad luck and sadness
I think it’s a little bit of both. To most people it probably is just normal typical complaining. Like I complain about still not being able to get hired in my field, not being able to move out of my parents house, being single and hardly being able to date, my job now and how it’s not what I want to be doing, not having privacy for staying in my family living room…just a lot of weird stuff. And the only reason I keep trying to make things not a big deal is because of the amount of people who preach always being positive and all that, but at the same time these situations all impede on something else I’m trying to do with my life so it drives me nuts, rather than just being boring or just life stuff
December 18, 2018 at 7:39 am #269803AnonymousGuestDear N:
I want to explain better what I meant in my post to you, the one before last, where I wrote: “you wrote that you know that your friends are happy because during a summer vacation, they were ‘gushing ab out boyfriends…”- the happiness you witnessed was their talking about relationships that in practice may be full of trouble”-
it’s the telling itself that makes them happy. It is something like this: a group of people are on a long hike across a long desert. Very difficult, hot, uncomfortable and they are miserable. Later on, when comfortable in a group gathering at home, they talk about that hike in glowing terms, happily.
It is not at all that they were happy during the hike, that they were focusing on the happy parts of the hike. Their happiness is about talking about something that happened and they are glad it is in the past and that they are comfortable now. Your friends may have happy experiences in relationships and their jobs, but the talking about these things happily is not an indication of happy relationships and jobs.
Let’s look at what you are unhappy about:
1. “not being able to get hired in my field”
2. “not being able to move out of my parents house”
3. “being single and hardly being able to date”
4. “my job now and how it’s not what I want to be doing”
5. “not having privacy for staying in my family living room”
My suggestion:
-if associating with your friends make you feel worse about your life, don’t associate with them, not for as long as the association makes you feel worse.
-regarding “the amount of people who preach always being positive”- stay away from Positivity Preachers. What if we don’t think of Positive vs Negative at all?
-Look at 1-5, make a plan. Don’t compare yourself to others, some are doing better, some are doing worse, some are dead. This is your life, accept it as is, and then make it better according to a plan. Make the plan small to start with, develop it as you go along, make changes in it, be patient.
anita
December 22, 2018 at 10:07 am #270437NParticipantIn that regard then it feels like the piling troubles and shitstorm of grief that I’m in doesn’t feel like it’ll end any time soon. Essentially you’re talking about letting a bad day pass and then weighing the good days even heavier because the bad day is over. Like how people say you have to experience pain to get true joy. But the thing I can’t get anyone to understand is what do you do when you feel like you’ve just been on a slope, and there’s not many highs to even speak of? I mean I was so optimistic when I’d graduated in June, but like two weeks after that doctors said my mom was getting worse. Then I thought she’d get better going to the specialty clinic in August so all summer was alright. Quit my job, had a vacation, that was cool, then we find out nothing can help her. Then from September to October I was applying, still hopeful, but then came an avalanche of job rejections so then I was broke. Then I got my job back in late October which was cool, I get some money even though I don’t want to work there, and she died not even a week after I went back. I keep reading these things about being grateful for small things, but I feel like the only thing I have to be grateful for is being alive and even that sucks. It just feels like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, there’s no way out of this shitstorm, and how much things go up there’ll be more disappointments immediately around the corner. It just isn’t balanced. I know no ones life is great but for most for every bad event there’s an equal number of good. I feel like for me it’s highly disproportionate
And doesn’t that make me a shitty person if I don’t talk with my friends? Like I’m blaming them because my life sucks ass? I like them a lot but it’s just a constant reminder of exactly how much shit is going on. Plus in a way I’m tired of always being the sad friend. Like catching up is always “I’m dating a new guy and got a promotion what about you?” My response is mostly “same as always and I’m not dead.” I really am trying it just always seems like it’s for nothing, and trying to explain that to people who just float through life and stumble upon good news is damn near impossible
December 22, 2018 at 10:49 am #270451AnonymousGuestDear N:
I didn’t suggest that you focus on the good, be positive and so forth. I suggest that you see reality as it is. If your “life sucks a**” then it sucks a**, that is reality.
Now what can you do so that it sucks less, that is the question.
anita
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