What to do when you’ve ruined your life
Every now and then, life becomes unacceptable.
It can happen for all sorts of reasons, but it generally comes down to one thing. You’ve lost something that really fucking mattered.
Maybe it’s a person. Maybe it’s a job. Maybe it’s your health.
Or maybe you’ve lost the idea of something. Like, an idealised future that for some reason suddenly seems completely out of reach. Because you fucked something up (or because you’re convinced you fucked something up.)
Oh *that's* why I'm so exhausted
When life is unacceptable, every day is another fight with reality. You wake up, remember what’s going on, and feel like shit.
Angry. Incredulous. Guilty. Ashamed. Whatever your particular cocktail of emotions, the internal message is clear: ‘life shouldn’t be like this’.
This fight with How Things Are is exhausting. It’s a fight you can’t win, but what else are you supposed to do?
FRYING YOUR BRAIN COMPLETELY. Not as fun as it sounds.
The first time my life became unacceptable, it was because I'd lost something I didn't even think I *could* lose. I lost my grip on reality.
I woke up one morning like any other, and I didn’t exist anymore. The world was there, but I wasn’t. As my eyes adjusted to the morning light of my girlfriend’s bedroom, I had a strong sensation that something at the centre of my being had disappeared, that everything had changed in some Very Important Way. I couldn’t shake this feeling for weeks. The abstract nature of the problem only made it more urgent, and totally bewildering.
Imagine trying to explain this to your friends and family – particularly when, thanks to a cultural heritage of New Zealand understatement, you present as completely fine and normal.
Me: “Mum, the thing is, I’m pretty sure I don’t exist anymore.”
Mum: “You might just be hungry? I’ll make you some lunch.”
Helpfully, there were other symptoms that drew a little more attention. The episodic breaks from reality, in particular. Moments when time and space would cease to exist, sometimes for hours on end. And waves of immense terror.
Why was this happening, you ask? It had all started with one single bad weed-smoking experience. (At least I thought it was just weed. Given the immense life disruption that followed, maybe not? My girlfriend and I had found the drugs in an unassuming plastic bag at the bag of her wardrobe in the flat she’d just moved into. Not my cleverest moment.)
At first I’d thought I was just somehow still high, that the drugs were taking a few days to wear off. Then a few weeks. Then, well eventually I didn’t know what to think anymore, other than… I have definitely fried my brain for good.
My Ever-shrinking world
As the months ticked on, there were many things I couldn’t do the way I used to. Each day one more thing was now outside my rapidly shrinking comfort zone.
Along with the bewilderment and angst, there was a good dose of guilt and self-flagellation thrown in, for doing this to myself.
Guilty until proven -- nope still guilty
When life becomes unacceptable, guilt is often a main ingredient.
Even without the psychedelic pyrotechnics of my particular story, it's easy to feel like your situation is your fault.
Maybe you're going through a break up, and doubting your decision (or doubting the things you did that lead to *their* decision).
Maybe you feel like you've ruined your career prospects somehow, and are doubting every life choice that got you to this point (ouch).
Or maybe you just feel awful through no fault of your own, but your inability to do anything about *that* makes you feel guilty and inadequate.
Lovely.
Not surprisingly, this internal pile-on doesn’t make you feel better. (Cue feeling guilty about how guilty you feel. Your brain may actually be an evil genius. Sorry.)
It's possible to ruin your life more than once. (And this is actually a good thing.)
Here's the thing. Some of us know that it’s possible to ruin your life beyond all repair, more than once. And while that may sound terrifying, there's actually a clue here about why we dive so deep into the Pit of Despair.
At 23 I thought for sure I had no future. I thought my brain was completely fried.
That was 10 years ago. Back then, I had no way of knowing how totally I would (eventually) transcend the pit of despair I found myself in. I had no way of even imagining that I'd one day look back and say, 'that pit of despair *made* me who I am, and I wouldn't change a thing'.
Then this year, a decade later, I ruined my life again (no drugs this time, just pure organic, grass-fed Life Stuff. Divorce. And a chronic, deeply challenging pain issue which, again, was self-inflicted, after a dumb mistake).
This time around there was a tiny voice in my head saying ‘wait on, haven’t we been here before…?’
In some ways that voice helped. ('I have expertise in Ruined Life Reclamation'). And in some ways, of course, it didn't help at all. ('That doesn't make this any less awful.')
But the fact that I'd been there before did point me toward something really important. Despair doesn’t have to make sense. It feels real, even when it’s not entirely true.
What this boils down to, as best as I can tell, is this:
You will feel like your life is ruined, even when it isn’t.
And that my friends is a very big deal, because it means...
Fear can't see the future
When we're stuck, when we're hung up on whatever Frankly Awful Thing is ruining our life, in our lighter moments we may try to convince ourselves that the Thing is not so bad, that the Thing will get better. And then, moments later when the fear returns, we feel all the more hopeless.
If you're anything like me, you then take that feeling of hopelessness as evidence of how fucked you are. You say to yourself, 'if I'm THIS afraid of having no future, I must REALLY have no future!'
And yet, I’ll say it again -for myself as much as for you. The lesson I have already learned once.
It is possible to despair at losing all hope of a good life, and then go on to live a very good life. It is even possible to do this more than once. And each time think for sure that *this* one's the one you won't come back from.
Our fear can't see the future. That's the whole point. We're afraid because we don't know what's going to happen next (will I feel this awful forever? will this awful thing get even awfuller?). And in the grips of that overwhelming feeling, we think that means there *is* no future (or at least no good one).
Your problems may never get smaller, but you will get bigger
Sure, you can probably think of some worry that consumed you years ago, but doesn’t even warrant a second thought now. (That break up you agonised over, that exam you completely tanked.)
But the truth is sometimes things do leave a scar. Sorrow that won’t ever fully go, or that will take so long to process that for a long time you won’t believe it will ever end.
In these instances, it’s not about making the problem smaller. The comfort here is not platitudes (‘it’ll be alright’), because even if it *will* get better, your fear won't let you believe that.
The comfort, when you can find it, is something more like this: These problems are big. That may or may not change. But know this, you won’t always be this small.
You will grow, and you will be bigger, and these big problems will be less overwhelming by comparison. Every day, week, month you stay on this earth, you will grow.
There will even be times you feel REALLY big - sitting and meditating, or immersed in the ocean, or just finding yourself in flow out there in the world doing the thing you’re great at, and your mind will be like sky and you will feel (really feel) that there is space for this big horrible stuff. Even space for that. And then there will be times, sometimes mere moments later, when the sky crashes in, when you are small again, when you seem to be completely overtaken by these big problems. And you can survive it all. Even all this.
There will be times when you get sick of this back and forth, and you won’t be sure whether you can keep it up. And then there will be times you see that back and forth as a kind of wayward, soulful dance, and you’ll find your feet, and your feet will find your rhythm. And on and on it will go.
As long as it needs to.
Wherever it may take you.
Places you can’t even picture today.
How do I know this? I know this because I’ve lived it. I’m still living it. And - knowing me - I’ll probably live it again (and need to learn this lesson once more.)
And one more thing this tells you, along with ‘it can be done — messily, slowly, imperfectly.’
It tells you you're not the only one who feels this way. Who feels THIS ruined for THIS long. There’s actually a whole lot of us out there - doing our best to keep up with our daily tasks under impossible, invisible weights. We’re right there with you even if you can’t always see us. Your fellow Life Ruiners, doing our best to find our way back.
And we do, you know. Just as you will. In ways you can’t even imagine yet.
Redeemably Yours,
Graham xx
The Big Feels Club
p.s. Hey you know what? This here page is the number one way people find The Big Feels Club - searching some combination of ‘what to do when you’ve ruined your life.’
We’re the number one ranked page for ‘have I ruined my life’.
(A dubious honour I wear with great pride.)
Didn’t I tell you it ain’t just you??
Want more? Try these…
What Do You Do When Live Feels Unliveable
Guest writer Gareth on how he learned to stay alive, even when his brain was trying to kill him.
Guest writer Amie tries a new kind of support for when life gets really hard, and finds it surprisingly helpful.
The award-winning podcast series we made about my girlfriend’s multi-year struggle with being suicidal. What do you do when you’ve asked for help but you still feel blown apart?
Need to talk to a real live human? Look you’ve probably heard the usual options before, but here’s a few more our community of big feelers have put together, just in case you need it.
Just want a little more proof you still belong on earth, even when life gets really hard? Consider joining 7,000+ other would-be Life Ruiners in our little club for big feelings. We tell the truth about mental health in a way that’s still encouraging. Pop your email in the box at the bottom of the page if that sounds like you :)
