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Comment by justforaoneoff | Hacker News Reader

COVID coincided with my daughter being born, my parents dying unexpectedly and my partner having complete mental breakdown all while I was working a very stressful job with long hours and high stakes. Years have passed and I still feel like the battered husk of the person I was. I have good days and bad days but I'm slowly coming to accept I won't ever feel the confidence, the capability or the boundless reserves of energy, love and patience I took for granted again.

Which is all to say, I hear you.

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Jeez, this resonates with me so much. In 2019 I was constantly on the upswing. But in 2020, it's been an intensely downward spiral since. I was under so much stress from a 60hr/wk job, isolated during covid with a partner who turned physically abusive and having constant mental breakdowns, on top of trying to endure it all for a once in a lifetime housing opportunity, and then both of my parents ended up hospitalized in the ER from covid... I remember feeling at the time that my mental gears were breaking and doing permanent damage. Those 6 months felt like such a short time that fundamentally changed me from a cheery person to permanently somber.

I quit my job in 2021, physically incapable of continuing and wanting to end it all, thinking if I just make it through each month it'll eventually get better and it never has. It only got worse like the universe kept ratcheting up the difficulty. My abusive partner only got more abusive as I didn't have a job (but paid all our bills) and couldn't muster any energy towards relationship milestones as the abuse and depression crippled me. Years of enduring this only led to now being abandoned and feeling worse than ever, like there is no upside worth the calamitous downsides in life.

That sounds really rough. Here if you ever want to talk about it. Sorry.

Sorry to hear that, really sorry.

One thing I dont get with similar stories - you felt things are seemingly going to shit in relationship yet no reaction, no quitting but maybe even double down? Abusive people will be abusive with no easy fix in sight, sucking it up for some real estate opportunity is a sure recipe for disaster and misery and no money gained will ever compensate for that. Thats one of 101 of life, there shouldnt be a need to really walk through it to confirm this. Kids do complicate this massively but you dont mention them.

Same for work it seems, working on edge of what you can handle means any little bad thing happening on top can send you over and down the spiral of breakdown.

I dont want to bash anybody and its more for others who will one day experience similar things - listen to your body, its telling you tons of things, and not for just fun. Its your best buddy so dont neglect it, there is no replacement and it really gets weaker with age, sooner than you would like.

I see a lot of high performers ending up similarly - very narrow focus on one brilliance ie work, but deep neglect of the rest. Never a nice story at the end. Nobody will be happy when dying from how much they worked or which investments worked out. If one really has to, set clear short term goals for when to stop it and have a bit of discipline (ie dont get used to better lifestyle that more money brings requiring you to continue).

You will hear success stories of those who got out and made themselves better. You won't hear the numerous stories of those who broke up, realized they're hyperdependent on a romantic relationship and don't have the strength to do without - or those who break up but end up with another abusive partner.

I doubt there is good statistics or research on this, but anecdotally, it doesn't seem uncommon.

You also mention "neglect of rest", and in relationships you might also say neglect of the self - but often it's not explicit neglect, instead it's not even being used to or knowing how to recognize or fulfil those needs. As an example, after my tinnitus got worse, rest is simply so hard to achieve that it doesn't matter if I make it my top priority. People saying I need to rest more obviously annoys me, and claiming I'm neglecting rest would be borderline disrespectful.

Not comparing tinnitus and workaholism, just making a general statement about the use of "neglect" here.

> you felt things are seemingly going to shit in relationship yet no reaction, no quitting but maybe even double down? Abusive people will be abusive with no easy fix in sight

I loved them so much that constantly fighting and being abused was still better than their absence now. I believed we would both turn things around, but it only got worse every few months. Being in this situation felt like a 90/100 misery scale, that I couldn't bear, and leaving would be asking me to volunteer for 95/100

> Same for work it seems, working on edge of what you can handle means any little bad thing happening on top can send you over and down the spiral of breakdown.

Also thought it would be temporary and not do permanent damage. In the midst of crisis, I'm thinking "just get through this month, it will get better" and then before you know it years have went by and all those months accumulated their toll

Every single person who winds up in that situation has said or thought exactly that about someone else. There’s a reason all this advice is a cliche, and there’s a reason we have to keep giving it, and just consider yourself lucky that you still don’t understand why that is. It’s harder to be human than it seems.

Sometimes, you just have to walk out on it all. Pack a go-back, open the door and go. You are not the domain of some vampire of suck to park their life in. You can just leave them and start over. Relationships should not a trap door function.

Similar here. Covid happened, lost my relationship of 15 years, had a total mental breakdown, lost my job, lost 20Kg, substance abuse, spent all my savings, struggle to pay bills. Lost my dad 2 months ago. Unemployed for a year now. I'll never be able to get back to where I was professionally. Feel dumb, confused and my memory sucks. Three shitty ass years. Medicated.

Slowly starting to see some light. My two young kids get me through this, they are with me every other week and give purpose to my life, they are best thing ever.

I hear you too. Don't be scared to ask for professional help. Meds can make a difference.

Seeing people's testimonials made me feel better so I thought I'd post mine.

Try and get sunlight on your retina 20 min 3 days a week. It can be through your eyelids but not through glass or glasses. That vitamin C and one of the B vitamins all help load the pathways to make serotonin. It won't magically fix your life but it can also help bootstrap your outlook. It can be grounding to watch the sun shift over the seasons. Best wishes.

Something you're never told when you're young is that life WILL take things from you, will never return them, and you'll never be the same.

You don't know how much, when, how or why, but it will happen. I consider someone blessed if they make it to middle-age largely "intact."

When you're young and unencumbered and largely undamaged you need to use that time in any way you can; inevitably you'll end up "walking wounded" one way or another--less than you were--unable to return to who you were before whatever(s) happened.

When I was young I'd encounter older men that struck me as "defeated", tired, incurious, dismissive, and I'd never understood why until the last ~half decade or so of my life.

I really think human "life" and vitality is something that does get "spent", often against your will.

I don't want to invalidate your feelings but I've had the opposite experience. I've been chronically depressed and have had multiple stays in psych wards but I'm finally starting to heal. I'm able to experience this pure joy that I haven't felt since I was a little kid. My life is still very difficult but I haven't felt this alive since elementary school.

Both can be true. I have been integrating a lot of different sides of myself and the long work of therapy is finally starting to coalesce into a real results.

But, also, a part of me died during our attempts to have another kid. At some point it just broke me in that dimension. I have doubts that it can be fully healed. It is grief, and it demands space and an outlet sometimes. And it hurts from time to time. It's no longer debilitating, but it is still there.

I've had some rough years recently as well.

I'm slowly healing and learning how to live a new life. A life that I like. But it's been really fucking hard. This wasn't in the manual.

I hear you both (and anyone lurking :). Much love to you all.

I just want to add my voice to say that my life completely disintegrated a few years ago. I lost almost everything, including my partner of over a decade, and reached a point where I didn't even have the motivation to wash or feed myself... because, what was the point? I was expending energy just to continue a pointless, joyless, struggle.

Battered husk is the best description I can think of for how I felt.

It took a while, but I was extremely lucky to find the right combination of therapy, SSRIs, and life changes to drag myself out of the hole. I now have a stable job doing something that sparks my interests and makes a meaningful contribution, and my love of life has returned. I still have the occasional day where it feels like I start to backslide, but they are getting rarer.

I want to reassure anyone who feels tired, burnt-out, and hopeless, that things can and do get better.

Shit is this everybody?

I feel like I'm constantly mourning who I used to be, like it was a different person entirely and there's no getting that level of empathy or patience back again.

I’m still working on it, not as extreme as some of these cases here it feels quite embarrassing to admit how much I mourn for my old life (changed country, became a father, zero social circle etc).

Zen practice and fitness have made an astronomically large improvement for me, but I guess everyone has to find that which helps them accept their current situation.

I had the same reaction.

I’m half the person I used to used to be, after a painful burnout. And it’s not even close as painful as what the OP experienced.

So many of my friends went through some very hard time that I stopped counting.

So yes, is this everybody?

I think economic factors and the health of society at large are one of the largest parts of this. I'm young and didn't get to grow up in an innocent time, and anyone older than me seems worse off. The only way I think I can make things work is to make drastic life choices like relocation, and live pretty alternative lifestyles like off grid for economic security.

I'm always wondering where the interesting people went, but maybe they became just like everyone else.

I believe you are right about the larger factors shaping the individual experience.

And since you mention that you are young, just to let you know: when "celebrating" the latest new years eve, all guests present (40 to 50yo) agreed that the main source of hope for the near future was the early disillusionment of younger generations. More power to you! :)

Woof

While I know this thread is self-selecting, it’s amazing how many folks share similar stories of how they feel burnt out in life since 2020.

I fear we’ve yet to hit rock bottom and more societal strife is impending, both in America and elsewhere. But like you, I agree there is some hope that those just starting out will rebuild something better from the ashes of it when it’s all over.

As a 35-year old though I worry I’ll be too old to truly reap the benefits. Although elder millennials, whose formative adult years were defined by the Great Recession and Gen Z, who had them defined by COVID, might have it even worse.

When my grandmother was alive, she would sometimes say things that stuck in my memory. One of the things she told me was that the only thing which really improved since she was young was medicine. She said that while a lot of technologies improved in a scientific sense, it wasn't a net positive because some of the hurdles which technology helped to remove were part of what made life enjoyable, amusing and meaningful.

It think the term "good old days" is not some delusion of the aging mind as the media keeps trying to convince us. As I've watched things getting worse during my own life, I've been getting increasingly confident that things really were better in those old days. I mean, even the kinds of people who existed; they were simpler people, happier people. They lived lives of mystery and serendipity.

Now you basically have to be rich to be happy and you usually have to do bad things to be rich... So it's difficult to find happiness nowadays. IMO, success in life is being both rich and also having a clean conscience; then you can have everything you need, yet still have the ability to look people in the eyes and mean what you say when you speak.

I'm in the same boat alienated by a 30+ year partner that won't even discuss the issues.

After 9 months what I have realized is that my 30+ year partner was not a good fit for me. The mental space cleared by not worrying about my ex-partner's contentless has feared up most of my brain power.

What I realize now is that my partner was wasting many of my brain cycles that are now freed up. I actually have fallen back into a brain space that feels like my early college graduate brain. The brain I had before I took responsibility for my partner's happiness.

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