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OzExige

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 9, 2008
438
1
Omnipresence
DIVORCE arrrrrghhhhh

I'm three years into a divorce and the only thing that has kept me sane is the girl I met 3 months after I moved out!

Love is like that :)
 
DIVORCE arrrrrghhhhh

Been there, done that. No fun.

The worst, however, was losing my partner and our son in a car crash (I wasn't in the car - was at work at the time).

21 years ago. Still struggle to deal with it.

What helps is my wife - I re-married 4 years ago this month. She has a happy knack of making everything better :)
 
Being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when I was 11. My whole family has it and I knew I was going to get it, so nothing helped...
 
Having two tumors in my lumbar spine. Luckily they were benign, but they still cause me a fair amount of pain and has greatly reduced my quality of life. But I do not complain about it too much because it could be so much worse.
 
i am so thankful i havnt had any life threatening things personally. (knock on wood..)(I am only 14 though).

For me it would probably be the 2 day period my parents were talking about divorce. lately they have been ok but we will see..
 
My brother's and my best friend's suicides. Nothing helps- absolutely nothing. Those are wounds that have scarred over, but I doubt will ever heal completely.
 
When I was 12 or so, I was involved in a head-on car crash. I was pretty OK as far as injuries go, but there was a young boy in the other car that was killed in the accident. The driver of our car was drunk, and we knew we shouldn't have let him drive. I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for letting that slip by.
 
My first wife took my 3 kids and moved several states away one night leaving me with nothing but an empty house, then got pregnant with someone elses kid.

A minister taught me how to let go, and when I did I met my current wife not long after. We been married now 12 years with 3 more wonderful kids :)
 
For me, it would have to be when the girl who I was sure I would marry broke up with me. It helped when a few months later I got really angry because I finally realized how badly she treated me after we broke up.

It doesn't hurt anymore, but I learned some good lessons the hard way. I was rather foolish, and I learned the meaning of the Benjamin Franklin advice that "If Passion drives you, let Reason take the reins."
 
My parents' divorce the subsequent upheaval. I haven't seen my father since the mid 90s. I'll still cry about it if I talk about it too much.
 
Having to attend 6 of the 10 railway suicides in the last 12 working shifts and having to clear them up piece by piece. It has knocked my head into a spin.
 
Mine are not as tragic as some of the others...I am 19 and the biggest thing is dropping the ball on two projects at work...and failing a college course, and not doing too great at school in general in my major. (GE's are fine)


My co-worker basically said that there is always people at work who have dropped bigger balls then me and they are still around...that kinda helped.
 
My brother 'surprising' me by flying my father up and having him turn up at my graduation last year. Probably not the worst for most of you, but considering I dislike my father it was not a happy day which should have been.
 
The death of my son at the age of 12 after 9 years of worsening illness.

Nothing helps, except remembering that it was truly a privilege to know him.
 
My wife was assaulted leaving work one night. Did not find her until the next morning. She suffered multiple skull fractures and eye sockets were shattered. Had a major stroke. Was in intensive care for three months with dozens of surgeries. Was in and out of comatose state. Had the majority of the right side of her brain removed. This was six years ago this June. She has really come a long way since then and has made a remarkable recovery and you would not even know she is missing the majority of her right brain if you were to talk to her. I have seen many people that have had minor strokes and have been worse off.

The community really came together and raised money for medical expenses and a van. In the last two years the Charleston Trident Home Builders Association pledged to build a new wheelchair / handicap accessible home and it is finally starting to happen. The community is pulling together again and there are many generous companies helping.

- James Armstrong
http://www.thearmstrongs.org
 
did your brother do this on purpose?

Well, thats in debate really. I have a feeling it was his evil wife's concoction, trying to ruin my graduation. Solved the problem this time, didn't tell my brother about my next graduation date! He's definitely not invited after the last stunt.
 
My problem is that I've had nothing too bad happen to me so my mind makes up problems. I get anxiety attacks every few years which cripple me for days. My last one which I only came out of a week ago lasted 3 weeks. It was pretty terrible - no creativity, depression, constant worry and fear. I lost a stone in weight in a week, slept for just a couple of hours a day.

I'm 22 and I've got my whole family intact. Outside of some friends from school the only death I've seen was my old dog dying. I'm worried I won't be able to cope should a family member die.

Editage - What helped? Little. I thought I needed help from family, parents, hospital etc. But in the end I just needed to fix myself. I had to constantly reassure myself that all my problems were linked to 1 single, not-that-serious problem. I worked out, I ate more and fought tooth and nail to get to my original self and it worked. I still get minor anxiety, problems that somehow get amplified but they're fading. In the end it took some really great people on this forum to get me better after a week with the initial problem.
 
The death of my mother, she was ill the whole time I knew her and died when I was 10.
 
My parents' divorce the subsequent upheaval. I haven't seen my father since the mid 90s. I'll still cry about it if I talk about it too much.

I didn't see my Dad for 22 years, but when I was in my mid-20s I got in touch and we built a fantastic relationship. So don't give up on seeing him.


When I was 12 or so, I was involved in a head-on car crash. I was pretty OK as far as injuries go, but there was a young boy in the other car that was killed in the accident. The driver of our car was drunk, and we knew we shouldn't have let him drive. I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for letting that slip by.

You really shouldn't feel any blame on your part for what happened, you were 12 at the time and really would not have been able to stop him.
 
When I was 8 years old my father started having some health-issues. He had had some mild seizures, so he was at home with me and my mother was at work. She had told me that if my father gets another seizure, I should call her immediately. As I was watching TV, I heard this loud thud in the livingroom: my father had collapsed on the floor and having a seizure. I noticed that he was bleeding from his ear. I called my mother who in turn called the paramedics. The 5-10 minutes it took for the paramedics to arrive were the longest minutes of my life. Then they came and took my father with them. After they had left I took some paper-tissues and wiped the blood from the floor.

I never saw my father alive again. He died in the hospital on the next day. Cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage.

It's been 22 years now, but I still remember it like it happened yesterday. And the event has given me this fear of dying. I'm not afraid of dying in an accident or war or something like that. What I am afraid of is dying due to some sudden illness. Seeing my father collapse like that made me realize that I too could one day just drop dead. One minute I could be full of life, the next I could be lying on the floor dying. That fear manifests occasionally as panic-attacks where I have the feeling that I'm about to die.

How can one get over an event like that? you don't really. You just learn to live with it.
 
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