Life is one of those things that happens whether you want it to or not, which means most of us have at least one moment where we suddenly realize we ended up someplace we never intended.
One Reddit user asked:
What was your worst "what the f**k am I doing with my life" moment?
Oh, you thought you were alone in that? Nope. Not even close.
A lot of the responses ahead mention substance abuse, physical abuse, career dissatisfaction, and some gore. Read ahead with caution.
At Home Alone
Happy Hour Reaction GIF
Giphy
When I got drunk at home, alone, and started vomiting in the bathroom, my vomit red from the wine I drank.
I thought for a second that I am throwing up blood. Spend the next two hours in the bathroom, violently crying.
That was the moment I decided to get therapy. Had a pretty rough time back then.
In therapy now and slowly getting better.
I've been sober for two years and completely forgot that I used to do this too. Jesus Christ. 🤦🏻♀️
Glad to hear you're working on your mental health/ self care. 😊
Higher Education
Working in fast food after graduating college with a 4.0 GPA.
I graduated into the 2008 crash, broadcasting. The iphone also hit around that time which helped speed up the irrelevance and death of radio.
It sucks, but I made a bad bet. Not everyone gets to win.
After I got my degree, the market was so bad that I send 400 résumés and only go 2 calls back.
One was a scam and the other was calling just to wish me good luck (that was kind of nice). I had to work in a clothing store for a while at $6.90 an hour.
I know that feeling man.
After getting fired from a sales job that I took straight out of college (because it was the first thing that was offered to me and I leapt at the thought of a "real job") I found myself working at a coffee shop and living with my parents three years out from graduating college with nearly a 4.0 GPA.
It sucked and old classmates from high school would sometimes come in and I couldn't help but feel embarrassed.
Several years later I'm in a good job that matches my degree and I'm doing well for myself, but it took a little while to get there. And that's ok.
In retrospect though I shouldn't have felt any shame at working at a coffee shop. A job is a job and the idea that I was somehow above it was stupid. But I get what you're saying about just feeling like you went to college for no reason.
Not Crack
When I smoked a piece of floor crumb thinking (hoping) it was a piece of drugs I dropped. No idea what it was, but it was most definitely not drugs.
I was a f*ck up for about 6 years and it took me almost twice that to fix things.
Drugs are bad man. I mean, they are really goddamn amazing, but what they do to you is terrible.
Savior Complex
When I was young, I was crazy in love with a man who told me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me and then shot himself five days later. It turned my world upside down and gave me a crazy savior complex.
A few years later, I was in a new relationship. He was a full blown alcoholic, unemployed combat veteran with horrendous PTSD, serious mommy issues and other stuff, and I just knew I could save him. I paid all our bills, worked three jobs to keep up with everything, slept about 3 hours a night because I was regularly jostled awake by his night terrors, did all of the housework and emotional labor in the relationship.
I came home from a 14 hour day to find him shaking on the couch next to a trash can full of vomit. Turns out he'd been going through withdrawals all day because he hadn't gotten his morning bottle quick enough. The next round of vomit was bloody, so my little 140 lbs self hailed his 220 lbs ass out to my car and rushed him into the ER. All his vitals were terrible and a nurse pulled me aside when I went to the bathroom to let me know that they didn't think he was gonna make it. They sent him to another bigger hospital to get treated, he asked me to get a few things from the apartment including his phone and meet them there.
When I picked up his phone, he had a whole bunch of messages from his "Auntie" which I opened, thinking I'd update her that he was not doing well and in the hospital.
"Auntie" ended up being his coworker (he was 29). There were flirty messages, dirty messages and pictures.
He survived, but my love for him and respect for myself sure didn't. I didn't leave that night sadly, but did eventually.
I'm Still Not The Same
I was really bad into drugs for a while when I was a teenager. One night while at a camping event, I mixed way too many things.
I couldn't move, think, or speak, and my brain felt like it was literally being rewired. If you can imagine a closed circuit with electricity popping off of it in every direction, that's what my brain felt like. All I could do was lay there while a bunch of rebel flag flying rednecks tried to run our tents over.
I had a panic attack for 10 hours. I finally was able to move enough to lift the blanket and sit up... when I looked down, my legs were covered in blood. Apparently I'd gotten my leg sliced open at some point.
My boyfriend at the time had to carry me to the truck and into the house once we got there. He had to undress me, bathe me, dry me off, and put me in the bed. Here I am 8 years later, and I'm still not the same.
My personality, ability to quickly solve problems on the fly, my memory, etc... everything changed. There was a significant lag in my ability to retain information for a few years. I'm sure I killed a lot of my brain cells that night just being stupid.
I had 0 regard for my life or any of the consequences that I could have potentially had to deal with afterward. I just didn't care.
I never really had issues with anxiety before then. It was out of control for a long time after, and I would often find myself curled up in the fetal position on the floor almost feeling completely paralyzed.
Just Waiting
Meme Reaction GIF by Silicon Valley
Giphy
Now really. I'm a mechanic for a firm that handles dangerous chemicals.
The job is fine but I want to do more with my life. I want to see the world and see more interesting things. I get to work at 6 work till 3. Wash and repeat.
I want to see the northern lights. I want to go to the Algarves. I want to sit on a beach with a coffee in my hand after just waking up and seeing my kids play in the sand. Instead I'm paying a house off, making sure the kids fit in our school system by giving him Ritalin and just wasting away and waiting for a diagnosis that's terminal.
It's like being locked in a cage. We bought a caravan and have a car that can pull it were ready to go but you're stuck at home because this pandemic won't let you do anything. We're not allowed to drive anywhere or over night anywhere at the min and it's like being in a cage.
I see loads of mates getting cancer or what ever some have died and I feel like I'm doing them disservice not living my life to the full, and that they'd loved to have been able to carry on living. Depressing but hey.
Ugly Devotion
Realizing I was the toxic one.
It's far too easy to fall into the grasp of obsession and hatred. I fumed at the mention of other people being abusive to others... and remained ignorant that I was exactly the same. I'm better now, I think. I hope.
Devotion can be beautiful, but can just as easily be an ugly, pitiful thing.
HEROES
I was living in Alabama in 2006, desperately trying to clean a mess my autistic 3-year-old had made on the kitchen floor before my abusive ex-husband got home from work. My ex had basically kept me from pursuing a career or furthering my education, and was isolating me from any friends that weren't his.
It was the middle of summer, and I felt gross and sweaty and hated being on my hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor.
My daughter was an excellent reader, although she only ever spoke things that she read. She brought over a TV guide from the living room which had a full two-page spread advertising the show HEROES before its pilot premiered.
"Some people are meant for something more," she read. "Are YOU meant for something more?"
My ex tried to kill me 2 years after this story. I fled Alabama with my kid and spent a lot of time in poverty.
But I taught myself the skills to enter an amazing industry, I remarried an incredible person who does most of the cleaning, and my autistic daughter just got accepted to Oxford.
My ex hasn't tried to see or communicate with (or support) his kid since she was 6 years old, but it's a small price to pay to never have to think about him.
A Different Field Of Employment
I am a registered EMT. The worst day of my life was a call I took when I was the lead EMT on the scene ie. I was in charge of telling the other EMTs what to do and all around was in control of the incident.
It was in a small public women's bathroom. I walked in and was immediately greeted by a woman screaming in a bathroom stall. I walked to the stall door and opened it. I froze.
There was a woman sitting on the floor covered in blood with an umbilical cord hanging out of her attached to an unresponsive newborn laying face down in the toilet.
The woman's screaming continued and I just stood there frozen the color drained completely from my face. I did absolutely nothing and was being to get tunnel vision when a more experienced EMT that was with me realize what was happening.
He pushed me out of the way and began shouting orders to the other EMTs.
The woman then went unresponsive due to blood loss and the absence of her screams helped me snap back to life and fulfill my duties. The baby did not make it however the woman did.
Here's the twist. All of this took place during my practical evaluations for my EMT classes. The entire situation was fake, the woman was an actor, the blood and gore was all done by professional makeup artists and I knew all of this when I entered the scene.
Still with all that I completely froze and couldn't do anything. I still ended up passing my evaluations and got certified but after that I decided to enter a different field of employment.
Logical Sense
Issa Rae Reaction GIF
Giphy
Was engaged to a man who was financially, emotionally and occasionally physically violent, all in front of our 2 yo daughter.
Then I met a man who asked me why I stayed. I couldn't come up with an answer that made logical sense.
I packed our stuff up and moved back in with my dad. BEST decision ever! Ended up marrying the other guy and now have a beautiful home, healthy relationship and another kiddo.
Tenure
I was a grad student working long hours to become a professor some day.
Then my advisor, who is much smarter than I am, who sacrificed having a family and basically never took any down time was denied tenure. When that happens, not only do you not get the brass ring, you actually are FIRED and have to search for a new job.
I had been focused on my research, sacrificing MANY MANY things I was interested in but had no time for. I saw that and that's when I said what the f**k am I doing?"
I finished my PhD and quit. Went into business instead. Made lots of money and have a great family life.
Tenure track is racket. It's a way to get highly skilled cheap labor. If you divide the salary by the hours it's not even minimum wage and no job security unless you win the prize.
Complications
Yesterday. Today. Day before. All three.
My dad's going to die today.
He got Covid, started to recover, hospital tried to put in a central line. Failed.
He started bleeding internally and wouldn't clot. He couldn't breathe so they put him on a ventilator. Somewhere during and after all that, he had two seizures.
I asked the doctor what the f*ck happened. He says, "complications from covid."
I ask him where the bleeding is from. He says "All over. We don't know."
I hear from other people that it started after they tried to put in the central line. His blood just refuses to clot.
They pump 10 units of blood through him. Won't clot. Unconscious, won't regain consciousness. They're going to take him off life support in 8 hours.
I'm 40 years old. I have no wife. No children. I rent a room out of a house near work.
At my age, my dad had a wife, three children, and a home. For all his faults, I look at where he was, where I am, and at the only things that really matter.
I do not measure up.
I am my father's son and I am a failure.
He is about to pass and, in my eyes, I am only and will ever be a disappointment to him. He will never know anything else.
- JereRB
Bean Bag Black Hole
After losing our daughter, my husband and I couldn't sleep in our (former) bedroom anymore. We had it set up so she was sleeping in the same room. Sids is a nightmare from which you never wake up, as much as months of screaming "it isn't real" and begging each other to answer when we'd really wake up would make you think just maybe it is.
Anyway.
We slept on an old, lumpy, horribly uncomfortable black bean bag chair pulled into the living room/common space that a housemate had brought when they moved in quite some time prior. We slept on that pit of depression for four(?) months fucking up our backs and frankly, hoping we wouldn't wake up.
Covid hit RIGHT after her death so social distancing was a blessing and a curse as it was an extra reason to lay there mindlessly watching lets plays because we couldn't cope with the silence of a house that no longer held the cries of a newborn.
One day, we couldn't do it anymore. Someone gave us a new bed they no longer needed because we couldn't even look at the one we used prior, a reminder of days when we'd sit on it and hold her. When we got that bed, I remember staring at that beanbag in horror, wondering how much time we'd truly spent laying on it in a fog of alternating apathy and inconsolable pain; wondering how much we could have been doing if we didn't let it suck us in, like a black hole.
Because that's what it was. It was a black hole of depression manifested into the most uncomfortable "bed" this world has ever seen.
So much time zombified. Not eating, not sleeping, staying up and pulling blankets down from his face and making sure he was breathing every night.
That was the most I think I could bring myself to do then, besides mindlessly clean the bathroom and stare at food in cabinets I couldn't make myself eat.
We dragged that thing outside and literally tore it apart, filling six trash bags with what ended up being cut up foam chunks of various hardness (some like bricks, some soft as a bunny, all sizes in completely hacked up and jagged shapes).
It was liberating. It was gutting the misery that gutted us.
We didn't start acting like real people and DOING things again until we set the bed up.
Our old bedroom is still unused outside of a place to contain dressers. Our daughter's dresser is in another room and always was, it's become more of a memorial. The pack and play is covered up kept near her dresser.
We're expecting another child in late spring, though all the girl clothes won't do us very much good (I doubt he'd appreciate seeing baby photos dressed head to toe in pink hand me downs from other moms when he gets older regardless of how much I care about gendered clothing and how bullshit a concept that is).
My dad has been holding onto the other baby stuff in his basement for us. We didn't expect to have another child so soon nor do we see him as a replacement which I'd like to make very clear, though for some time I do recall we'd look at each other and whisper we would feel as empty as our arms until there was someone we could hold again. Besides our lizards, who are very helpful and loving boys that brought us all the snugs we could ever need before it all happened and after.
I don't know how they feel about having a little brother who is twice/three times their size soon, but I'm sure they'll be okay with it.
Her birthday would have been Saturday. On this day last year I went into the hospital to begin a very stubborn induction. It's not an easy week, but god damn. We learned to move forward when we ditched that fucking thing, we're people again, we've been making significant progress in life. We've come a long way.
I didn't know how badly I needed to write this out tonight. Thank you, OP. This was extremely cathartic.
Get Up
A couple years ago, while taking a walk through a park I spotted a homeless guy that didn't look right, slumped against a tree. Went to investigate and found that he was likely OD'd.
I tried chest compression to get his heart going as I called the authorities. Nobody came.
I ended up waiting by the tree with the guy for a couple hours in the rain.
I just remember sitting next to him, thinking about a lot of things. I ended up looking over my life up to that point, and decided again that I had to keep trying and get up.
Monotone
every day I sit in front of my work laptop, I regularly ask myself "wtf am I doing with my life?" and it's incredibly weird because on paper, everything is going great with my life, all things considered.
I just don't get it.
From time to time I'll get lit, and same thing, the thoughts come back. WTF am I doing with my life?
All my life I thought "I love the idea of programming, getting paid well and sitting in front of a pc instead of working outside!"
Now that I am exactly in this situation, I'm not that happy as I thought. Yes there are some good days, but all around life seems kinda ... monotone.
Not Equipped
Probably not the worst, but it was a milestone.
As a grown, single woman, dating a single man, I found myself hiding in his room from his housemate because of his religious/sexual hangups.
I asked myself what the f*ck I was doing with my life and resolved then to stop dating men who weren't actually equipped to be in a relationship.
Chronic
I was watching porn of something I'm not even remotely attracted to. I happened to see my reflection and everything changed.
I used to masturbate 5-12x a day like it was nothing. It got so bad I didn't have to be hard to orgasm. It was like my unit knew. I was sore for a good month.
After seeing my reflection, I started following "no fap" expecting I'd get superpowers and suddenly have more focus and confidence, etc.
Very quickly I realized that sh*t was absolutely NOT working and I eventually just gathered my courage and started talking to girls and stopped being a little b*tch about it.
I socialized more, talked more, and eventually got a girlfriend and had sex. I moved on from multiple times a day chronic masturbation.
It was bad bro. All I did was play video games at least 18 hours a day and the other part was spent beating and sleeping. I was so compulsive I even muted my mic mid game just to do it. It was terrible.
Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.