My son had cancer during COVID, though he was fortunate enough to beat it into remission (with the help of a huge care team).
I was active duty military, and he is also non-verbal and autistic.
The things she talks about, how focused she was and how hard it is to do any of that now, I've been experiencing exactly the same things. I find it hard to do anything, put anything together, etc. after 3 years of managing his care closely, being at his bedside all hours, having to scream at nurses to call away a code because he couldn't breathe (anaphylaxis), and a ton of other things. All of this while working 50+ hours a week, including remotely from his bedside.
It's like I burnt out that part of me. Maybe I'm slowly healing? But I don't feel like it. I get minutes or hours when I can hit that stride again and it's absolutely terrifying to realize that I can no longer keep it up.
I don't know that this comment adds anything to her story. I just felt like I understood her on a level that's hard to communicate and had the urge to share that.
My wife died of ovarian cancer in February of 2020, right as covid started.
It felt like I was running on adrenaline and cortisol for two years. Scrambling to find anything to help, steadily applying the steel tip of my proverbial boot to the backside of the healthcare industry, doing home IVs, changing ostomy bags, making sure meds were straight, trying to gently urge her to eat something at all, deep diving into the pits and snares of clinical trials, looking at adjunct therapies and arguing with doctors about our right to do those, growing to an ambient, everpresent rage over time.
When she passed, it all went silent, and then the world shut down.
I still feel like my brain has changed. It's difficult to put my finger on how.
In retrospect a lot of the time I spent trying to find options and understand the disease and its treatment would have been much better spent tending to the emotional needs of my family. I should have accepted much earlier that it was over and just prepared for that inevitability rather than clawing and scratching for options right until the end. I just didn't know how to do it.
I’m so sorry for your loss. Something did change, and i think it’s good you feel that. Someone I used to work with, their wife was a professor at Rochester university and her research was around happiness. She would tell me that our baseline happiness in life is virtually constant (on large timescales, we all have good/bad days etc), there’s not much we can do to alter it in adulthood to shift it. There were a few exceptions, loss of a child, partner or critical illness.
I’m not sure what comes next but really hope that energy and happiness finds its way back to you with time.
>Someone I used to work with, their wife was a professor at Rochester university and her research was around happiness. She would tell me that our baseline happiness in life is virtually constant (on large timescales, we all have good/bad days etc), there’s not much we can do to alter it in adulthood to shift it.
If you're someone who struggles with chronic depression this statement is extremely demoralizing. But it's also hearsay -- you're a stranger on the internet, so you want me to believe based on a stranger's colleague's wife's alleged research, that depression cannot be effectively treated?
If you want to share that researcher's work, provide a link. Keep your rumors, suppositions, and lay-person's doomer psychology to yourself, unless you are planning to make a post with direct citations that is in effect nothing like the comment you did leave.
People's lives depend on this. You can't just post "if you have depression you'll never be able to change it" cavalierly as though you are an expert and your post has no consequences.
Someone is going to read your supposition, your rumor, believe it, and despair.
This is a well known concept called the "Hedonic Treadmill", which exists since the 70ies, not "doomer psychology". It also does not say treating depression is not possible. Depression is a disease.
Fully agree. And even if there was a legitimate study, it wouldn't be dispositive. I had horrible anxiety and depression for most of my adult life. I believed I would never be a happy person, and that I would always be tormented by my mental illness.
I finally found treatment that worked for me in the pandemic (Ketamine assisted psychotherapy), and it was life changing. It has been 2.5 years since I stopped treatment and I'm 10x happier. I wake up every day happy and curious about what the day will bring.
My wife has had anxiety and depression her whole life. I have been carefree and happy all of mine. I've been bullied at school, broke to the point of hunger after college in the 90s, and lost my sister to ovarian cancer 5 years ago. And aside from dealing with "in the moment" problems, my brain is always in freewheeling happy mode. Whereas my wife, no matter how "right" her day went, tens to be negative and beat herself up. It's how we're wired. She did therapy and she thinks that 90% of it is bullshit.
However, in the last few years she said that her "negative voices" (not actually schizophrenia, but her own nagging, disrespectful, negative narration) have gotten under control through CBT. She says it's something she needs to work at daily, though, because her brain seems to be wired that way. And she's controlling it and staying healthy without any meds.
So while I think there's something in that anecdote I don't think it means that you can't have a good life.
The entire point of clinical depression is that it's not environmental, it's intrinsic. Yes, this means it won't change - that's why antidepressants exist. It's why you should see a therapist for it, and should stop listening to people implying you can just eat different or whatever. This knowledge sucks, but you trying to keep that a secret and shaming someone into silence isn't helping.
> The entire point of clinical depression is that it's not environmental, it's intrinsic. Yes, this means it won't change
Wrong. I lost at least a decade of really great years to this belief. It's bullshit. I've made huge strides in my "clinical" depression despite my environment not markedly improving. I did, however, improve myself enough to recognize and stop maladaptive behaviors.
It's hard as hell to change yourself, but you're not immutable.
> I should have accepted much earlier that it was over and just prepared for that inevitability rather than clawing and scratching for options right until the end. I just didn't know how to do it.
And yet with the other choice you might have regretted "not having done everything you could have". That is the curse of those with the ability to actually do something. In many ways, those who do not understand and simply place their faith in doctors are less burdened.
You did what you thought best at the time; that is all you could have done. Nothing you did or did not do was a mistake.
There are no "right" answers when facing mortality. My sympathies for what you went through, and I hope you are doing better.
》 In many ways, those who do not understand and simply place their faith in doctors are less burdened.
This is so true.
I wish I could write a better response but my wife has her periodic pet-scan in 1hr. Those scan always leave me paralyzed with fear of recurrence of the metastatic breast cancer she has. it's probably off topic so sorry internet strangers but writing it brings a little relief.
Thank you, I appreciate it. The 'doing everything I can' aspect is real. I was only in it for two years and it truly gave me a new perspective for folks that are dealing with similar circumstances over a much longer timespan.
> I should have accepted much earlier that it was over and just prepared for that inevitability rather than clawing and scratching for options right until the end.
No way. If you had done that you would have felt even worse for not trying everything you possibly could.
+1 to this, my mom died because of COVID in India 1 months after she left US after visiting me, and I still feel guilty that I didnt insist on getting her the vaccine before she left for India, and then at the time of her death India was locked down so no flights and I wasn't even next to her. It's been 4 years but every so often I think about this. I blame myself less now after some therapy, but If you didn't try all that you could you'd probably feel guilty like me.
What I wrote down below is a bit jumbled, but I felt like you describe something I hadn't realized yet. That maybe my brain has changed. And I needed to respond and think about your idea. I hope you are finding a way to deal with it.
This is resonates with me. My father died from cancer a year ago, the bit that survived two treatments was extremely fast moving. I had a business with him, and I spent a year trying to do as much of his job and mine to help him out. But he wanted to work, and I think it was good for him to have forward looking goals.
It feels like every day I am trying to figure out how to make my brain work the way it used to. And almost every day I am trying to decide if we had a bus factor of 1. Fortunately I have family support, and a part time job to keep me busy and bring a bit of money in.
I think about the emotional support and I think we did the best we could have. My dad was clear about listening to the doctors about his options. We spent some time reading about options and researching. But it was clear to all of the immediate family that we lacked the depth of knowledge needed. It was interesting to read about and learn about the techniques. And we were able to get advice from medical family friends. But his team was very good and thoughtful. We also thought the treatments were working. Until a later scan showed a small blip and before we could understand the options and decide he was in the hospital and terminal.
I still feel like I'm moving through the motions of running our business, but not actually doing it. Or something, it is a frustrating feeling that I am trying to fix but maybe I can't. Or maybe it will take years.
It's impossible though. Accepting something like that. If it's your own death I think that maybe you can eventually accept its coming. But if it's your wife? Christ, I'd be searching the earth non stop too.
My sister died of ovarian cancer right at the start of COVID. My big sis, 1 year older. Even though the oncologists said early on that it was extremely aggressive and wasn't responding to treatment, nobody in the family could process it. Oddly, except myself. I live an hour away from them and I think that separation allowed me space to process the inevitable. I tried to be that person who took care of the emotional needs of the family, and my brother in law. But I didn't have a single person to "confide in" because nobody accepted that she was going to die, including her. She had just had a baby a few months before (IVF, and tbh I'm wondering if that process kicked the cancer off). She had to look at her tiny baby and imagine him growing up not knowing her. You could see it in her eyes when she looked at him. Yet she couldn't bring herself to make little recordings, write emails or notes to him for when he's 12 or whatever. That's how much denial she was in - she denied him that sense of what it would be like to have her talk to him.
The first to give up hope was her husband actually. I suppose because he was closest to the front lines, and saw the toll it took on her, the constant downhill. And the dozens of other things that aren't cancer but are part of the depressing array of events like pleural effusion, blood clots, and the digestive system eventually getting blocked off with tumors. When he finally admitted to me that it was terminal, she had less than two months left.
My lovely wife is sitting across the table from me now wondering what "heavy stuff" I'm typing. I couldn't imagine being able to accept losing her.
I hope your life is recovering.
My brother in law met a lovely woman just over a year ago. She has two kids and he had his one. They make a great family unit and she's good for him. Even in practical ways like taking turns bringing the kids to school or sports, covering for him when he had to work late. My family get along with her too. I know it still hurts him to think about what he lost but he's very much a "get on with life" person, so he gets on.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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! :)
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 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.
We live the life of the Servant. We used to define ourselves by our profession, now we define ourselves as "special needs parent". This is a step closer to actually being more human. How trivial our lives were before, how we wasted so many hours on shit that didn't matter!
I know nothing of the difficulties you nor the OP face, but
> It's like I burnt out that part of me. Maybe I'm slowly healing? But I don't feel like it.
You've probably heard it, but maybe to help remind, I just wanted to say - It's okay to be burnt out and do little or nothing. I believe it's the minimum requirement to healing and it _will_ take years maybe even a decade. I was cheated on and that affected me for 2 years and that's trivial to the road you walk.
I was fortunate enough to be in a place where I could "retire" the month after he rang the bell.
I've been doing my own thing for close to two years now, trying to heal.
Maybe I will someday. Until then, I somehow manage to keep up with his (still elevated) needs and try to be a good husband and father to my other child.
The sheer intensity of being in constant survival mode for someone you love, especially in such high-stakes moments, doesn't just fade once the crisis is over. It leaves something behind, or maybe takes something away. I don't know if healing looks like "going back to who we were" or if it's more about figuring out who we are now, with everything we've carried
It is also important to realize that the past does not exist, not really. You get to decide, every day, who you are. It is the simplest and hardest thing.
I think it's obvious. Everyone should treat anyone with empathy respect patience understanding and love. Most of all love.
That level of understanding between you and her should be universally shared between everything that is living. This way, support can always be found.
I wish you and your family all the best. The same goes for Bess, as I told her many times. I wish I could give you a hug, make you feel protected and capable, as the hero that you are.
thank you for sharing. what you describe is akin to what other survivors of utter helplessness describe. usually we think of "trauma" as surviving naked angst, fear for our life or health, uncontrollable horrific events. and that's also in classic medical definitions. but we're slowly learning how many existential crises of utter helplessness, also proxy-helplessness for a dear loved one, can put our brains into a out-of-place state. If that resonates somehow, the good news is that there are exercises, guided approaches to help the brain reconfigure back into the original state of empowerment and optimism. "Somatic experiencing" is one of them, emdr another one (in the hands of an experienced and trained trauma certified clinician), and there are some more. long story short: there are paths forward.
It’s called depression and when it happens because of a situation in your life that you have limited control over it can be very difficult to recover. Get professional help if you haven’t. It is hard. Been there.
Time. Focused effort. For me my happiness set point is decent. It takes work to get out of the hole though. No one thing. Exercise. Diet. Forcing myself to do things I know I enjoy. It can feel hollow, but it comes back. Lots of meditation, stoicism, cognitive behavioral therapy. Recognize the negative thought pattern loops early, combatting them, reminding yourself what they are.
Throwaway: when my daughter was 4, she took a bath. My wife was in the living room doing laundry, literally 5 steps away. At that point, my daughter had just finished swimming class 3 months before. I was at work. When she called "mum!", my wife said: "Coming" and folded one final shirt. When she then entered the bathroom, my daughter floated in the tub, face down. No breathing, no sign of life anymore. My wife revived here on the floor of our living room while calling 911 and crying for help.
She had a simple fever cramp (her second) in the tub and nearly drowned because of it.
This was roughly a year ago. I remember walking out of the building at work in trance, looking for a cab, after I got the call, thinking my daughter was dead. She was back to normal (apart from the nasty infection that lead to the fever cramp) on the next day. Buy my wife and I have never been the same since. I entered the apartment 2 days later, and the tub was still filled with water and some of my daughters hair, and there was blood on the living room floor because the medics gave her sedatives and she kicked against the syringe. While cleaning my daughter's blood from the floor, I got the distinct feeling that she really died and that I was just in a very long dream in which she survived, and that I would wake up very soon to a world of sorrow. That feeling has never left me. It may explain why most things now feel completely irrelevant to me, including work.
We quickly bought a house 6 months later and left the apartment. I now realize that this was mostly motivated by the fact that we couldn't stand the look of the bathtub anymore. It was also because we simply weren't afraid anymore of the debt, of the additional work, of moving. Fear is something that only remains a numb feeling after such an experience.
She is 5 now. The worst part is that she fully remembers. A few weeks ago, she freely and cheerfully explained in daycare that she once was bathing and then cried "mum" and then "fell asleep under water". At dinner a few months ago, she also explained that to us and then laughed and mentioned that "mum must've thought I am a mermaid" and happily continued eating. It crushes me just thinking of it.
If my wife had folded 2 or 3 shirts before entering the bathroom, my daughter would be dead now. If my daughter hadn't yelled "mum!" the second the fever cramp started, of if she would've yelled it under water, she would also be dead now. In this probabilistic decision tree, the leaf where my daughter survives has a probability that is negligibly small. To my very great surprise, I have found that this inevitably leads to religion. I have never been religious before, but I have indeed found great relief in prayer and sitting around in empty churches.
Life to us is now nothing but walking on a thin crust of ice, which spans over an infinite hell of fire, horror and torture. At any time, without warning, the ice may break.
Your daughter has taken it all better than you. We're all a moment away from death - on the road all it would take would be one yank on the steering wheel at the wrong time - even by some other driver.
Your description of being in a trance after you found out is eerily similar to how I felt when I got the message that I needed to get to the hospital and start signing paperwork because my son had cancer.
My life has a stark demarcation of before and after that, and sometimes it feels like nothing is quite real since.
Strangely, I feel that my wife was able to come to terms with this demarcation much more quickly than I, although she was obviously much more traumatized than me in the time immediately after the event. (I quickly talked to her on the phone when she was in the ambulance, she was mostly incoherent and it was impossible to even get the information out of her whether our daughter was dead). I think this is mainly because it was entirely and only her who saved her life. She took control of the entire situation just seconds after it collapsed on her, and successfully turned it around completely by herself. I, on the other hand, was forced to be completely passive for nearly 2 hours, alone, with incomplete information, and with periods in which I thought I had lost my daughter. It was me who had a breakdown in the night after the event, in a dark hospital room, and it was again my wife who handled that situation.
I really hope you guys are getting propper help, this state of being must be horrible, especially since nothing happened in the end. Nothing happened because your wife after all made sure to not be too far away and was alert enough to hear her call. We're all 2 minutes away from death should we somehow stop breathing, best we can do is to minimize risk.
Me and my wife had a horrible experience ourselves where our 2 year old daughters best friend(also 2 years old) drowned in their family swimming pool after figuring out how to open the door herself. I know this wasn't nearly as close to heart as the other stories in this post, but receiving that text on a Saturday evening was super tough and me and my partner was crushed for months after it happened. It's now been 10 months and we rarely think about it anymore although we did end up in a house WITHOUT a swimming pool, so in a way it's still with us.
One of my childhood friend lost his little brother in a similar accident. 25 years later, I have a similar phobia of private swimming pools, ponds or any unsupervised water surface. I cannot see a private swimming pool and not think about him. He was a happy toddler, just like my kids today.
Thank you for realizing what's important. Protect those you love, and see them. I'm glad your daughter is OK, that seems like such a scary ordeal. What you have to do now is find love and interest in the little things again so that you can teach her to do the same. Teach her to trust that the ice won't always break.
My grandfather ran me over when I was 6 and nearly killed me. When he ostensibly realized what happened, he took his sweet time to exit the vehicle while it was pinning me down, slowly get out, stare at me, and then made sure to run over me again while moving the vehicle. The only two things that saved me was that he was driving a light pickup truck, and my bike folded around my chest and neck and prevented the wheel of the truck from crushing them. I will never know if he saw me and ran over me intentionally or not, but I was in plain view waiting for the bus and he never expressed any emotion at any point over what happened.
I was crying and shaken up and traumatized, but he made sure I still got on that bus without so much as a quick medical checkup. I felt very numb and isolated for a long time after that. No one around seemed to understand that I'd just experienced a near-death experience. I also didn't receive a new bike for years, seemingly out of spite.
As a child aged five, I broke through the ice and fell into a pond that had frozen over. The Kindergarten teacher was both alert and quick thinking enough to get me out fast. I never remembered more of the event that a) I wore a velvety-black-colored coat made from corduroy and b) that I woke up in the ambulance soggy wet as was the teacher next to me.
The rest of that event - why I walked away from the group, whether I was called back or just lucky, or even what I thought or felt when I went into the water - all gone. Can't remember. Only that afterwards, it felt odd how panicy mum was, and that she immediately insisted on swimming lessons.
So when I was five, this was an experience like "any" - How was I supposed to understand that I had a close brush with death, or what that even meant ?
(I wish your daughter a long and happy life, and may neither her nor anyone have to experience the feelings that you did, or my mum)
While at a stop sign, a car veered off the crossing street into my car at about 40 mph. My pregnant wife and 1 year old were in the back seat. Our car was destroyed and the other guy drove off, never to be found.
No permanent injuries on our end, but what you said about walking on a thin crust of ice rings true. And feeling like there's another reality where things didn't turn out OK. All the best to you, I am glad your daughter is OK.
This terrifies me. My mom died when of cancer I was 11, and I am much more anxious about things happening to my kids than my wife is.
One day my wife said she was going to give our 4 year old daughter a bath, then I find my daughter by herself in the bath and my wife all the way across the house in the bedroom. I asked “Why aren’t you watching her?” The reply, “She’s fine. She knows how to swim and the water isn’t even that deep.”
I work remotely in the upstairs bedroom and will occasionally come down for water. Half the time I find my one year old eating alone in his high chair in the kitchen, with my wife doing something in the bedroom. “Where are you? What if he chokes?” “You don’t trust me. He’s fine. I can hear him from the bedroom.”
My wife will get in road rage incidents. People flip her off and yell threats at her as she slingshots through traffic with our little kids in the back seat. “You’re going to crash driving like that.” “Stop telling me how to drive.” Someone pretended to pull a gun out on her after she swore at them. “You’re going to get shot.” “No I’m not. I can tell if any of those people would have a gun.”
She also has severe ADHD. Our daughter got under the sink when she was two and ate half a dishwasher detergent pod before my wife noticed and called poison control. Another day when my daughter was two my wife forgot to shut the gate at the bottom of the stairs when she came upstairs to talk to me during the workday. Suddenly I hear a series of thuds and cries. Our little girl had fallen down the flight of stairs after trying to follow my wife without her noticing. Same thing happened to my 1 year old son under the watch of my wife’s mother.
I’m so scared that one day I’m going to get a call about something horrible that has happened to my kids either because of my wife’s inattention or anger issues.
Those don't sound like unreasonable concerns at all. Wish you the best.
There's something I wanted to say reading this whole thread. I just hope it does not come off as lecturing or preaching. It's this: Don't feel bad about things that there is no way for you to change. Just do your very best about the things you can. Nobody can ask more of anyone.
> I got the distinct feeling that she really died and that I was just in a very long dream in which she survived, and that I would wake up very soon to a world of sorrow.
This is how I've felt every time a friend has tried and failed to commit suicide. I'm so sorry.
You used to be a superhero. And you still are. Remember who you are.
You were drowned in frustration. But now you acknowledge the reality of the present situation, it's time to execute the new accomplishments that will prove your greatness.
I was active duty military, and he is also non-verbal and autistic.
The things she talks about, how focused she was and how hard it is to do any of that now, I've been experiencing exactly the same things. I find it hard to do anything, put anything together, etc. after 3 years of managing his care closely, being at his bedside all hours, having to scream at nurses to call away a code because he couldn't breathe (anaphylaxis), and a ton of other things. All of this while working 50+ hours a week, including remotely from his bedside.
It's like I burnt out that part of me. Maybe I'm slowly healing? But I don't feel like it. I get minutes or hours when I can hit that stride again and it's absolutely terrifying to realize that I can no longer keep it up.
I don't know that this comment adds anything to her story. I just felt like I understood her on a level that's hard to communicate and had the urge to share that.