I’m going to try and express whatever it is that I’m feeling.
It’s been a super bad time for everyone in my family the last two years, basically since the beginning of 2022.
I got laid off last year after moving in to help my Dad out (my folks are divorced), spent a couple of months trying to find work but couldn’t, so I started my own company. I landed a client, and put in a couple more months trying to get things setup (wasn’t being paid until the last two months). My old employer threatens legal action, that I was in breach of a non-compete agreement I’d signed like five years prior (even though they’d let me go), so I had to close my startup.
It was a couple more months before I could find work again, which puts us around April. I work there for about three months, when they decide to let me go. Literally that same exact day, I get a call that my sister is talking about leaving her husband (they’d just found out she’s pregnant). Things seem to blow over, then about two weeks later, my Mom calls and said she’s tried to kill herself. We all immediately drop everything and go to be near my sister.
Over the course of about a month, things go from bad to worse. We find out that her husband has apparently been a super controller POS, my sister decides she’s going to leave for what’s effectively a women’s shelter for pregnant women. My Mom quits her job (basically cleaning) to help her make the trip, because it’s out of state. She does, and my sister is there for a grand total of three days before she calls saying she wants to come back, that she’s going to hurt herself unless she can come back.
That sparks a huge series of arguments between everyone, and she gets her husband to wire her money so she can take a greyhound bus back. At this point, my Mom and her husband are out about $20k over quitting their job, and what she spent renting a car and hotels along the way. As of now, she’s back living with her husband, who none of us have talked to.
Well my Mom lives in an RV, which she hates anyways, and that only made things harder for her. Meanwhile I’ve effectively been out of work for nearly two entire years. I’m staying with friends, and they both offered and insisted my Mom come stay as well, until my sister has her baby in a few months, which is super generous.
Fortunately, I finally heard back and got a job offer, which starts at the end of the month.
But even so, I just… really feel like a huge disappointment. I’ve always thought of myself as being a hard worker, it’s something my grandpa always drilled into my head the importance of working as hard and doing as good a job as you can, purely for the sake of it. But I feel like I’m just so fucking loser that has wound up mooching off of everyone. I can’t seem to get it together. And while my Dad knows how much I appreciate him, I know it’s my Mom that is really struggling. She’s in her late 50’s and spends her days scrubbing toilets, she can barely afford her own groceries, yet is constantly trying to help me or my sister. And I just can’t seem to do anything to get my own life on track, let alone do anything to make HER life easier. And I know the fact both me and my sister have no stability eats away at my mom. So not only do I feel ashamed for being a failure, but I also feel guilty because I know all this worrying she does is taking years off her life.
When we were younger, we had cousins that never worked, never did anything to improve, because they were happy to mooch off our grandparents. Or the families we knew, where there would always be that one drug-addict kid who could just never do anything right, that would drag down the mother who couldn’t help but keep bailing them out.
That’s how I feel.
Like I’m some perpetual fuckup whose friends and family has to bail them out. And they aren’t even in a position to help, but they do it anyways.
I know I’m supposed to be “thankful” — and believe me, I truly am — but I just can’t describe the overwhelming shame that I feel. Knowing that my existence is a negative impact of their lives, because I have people willing to give me the shirt off their back, and I feel like I haven’t even had the choice to turn them down.
I’ve got about $15k in credit card debt, and my credit score is low enough I can’t even qualify for a loan. I start my new job at the end of the month, but I can’t afford my minimum payments this month and I’m going to get a bunch of missed payments on my credit report, which is going to make it even harder to climb out of this hole.
And for about the past six months, I’ve been just breaking down crying every couple of days. I’ve been able to keep it to myself, mostly because I’m basically stuck in my room all day. I feel like at any point, I could just break down into tears. I’m just trying to keep my mind on things like looking up what kind of online certificate I could peruse to give me a better fallback option, in case I lose my job again. I love video games, but almost never play them, because I feel guilty wasting time, even though I still haven’t found anything productive to do with my time.
I dunno, man. I’m just really not feeling like I’m in a good place. You know those movies or tv shows, where you can just *feel* like things are going to get worse, somehow? That’s how I feel. All the time. I don’t even feel like things *can* improve, like there’s something innately wrong with me that is causing all these horrible problems for everyone.
I guess I don’t even know what I’m asking anymore. I just feel like a complete fucking loser, and I don’t know how to be better.
11 comments
I think you should give yourself a break. It sounds like you’ve been on a rollercoaster and that can take a toll. Especially when it’s people you care about who are in trouble, but despite investing in their dysfunction, they still do the wrong thing and lash out at you. That situation must have hurt
Perhaps all these things have just caught up with you and you’re just processing your feelings now. That’s quite normal and it’s good that you’re collecting your thoughts and expressing yourself – keep doing that.
It sounds like you have an opportunity to solve the majority of your problems with this new job. Debt will take time to clear, but you can chip away at while you plan your next move.
Don’t let yesterday’s failures take away from today’s opportunities mate.
All the best 🙂
I’m really sorry to hear all you are going through. I (43) can only try and give some advice that will help you at least feel like you can a bit more control over things.
The first is just try and manage the moment. You have to put your own oxygen mask on first before you can help others. By making good choices for yourself first, you’ll be better suited to help others later.
Second – call your credit card companies and ask them to pause or extend your payment date due to a hardship (fired from work). Be really kind to the person who is helping you and ask if there is anything they can do, to please help you in anyway way they can. They may waive one or two late fees, or maybe nothing at all – but you’ll feel like you’re at least doing what you can there.
Third – THIS IS ALL TEMPORARY. How you are feeling, your circumstance, your situation. It’s all able to change – it may take time and a lot of effort, but you’ve got to stop this record playing and start planning your future. As the saying goes…plan the work and work the plan.
You got this man. Keep going!
I don’t have much useful to say that’s going to immediately improve your situation. I think if anything is clear from your post, it’s that you’re trying. There is a pressure on men of our age to have our shit together and the expectation you’re putting on yourself seems to underpin a lot of your angst.
A lot of what you are going through resonates with me and the one thing I have learned of late is to try and humble myself.
Accept that I am not now or ever going to be this perfect embodiment of a “successful” man and will forever remain a work in progress. Not everything is within my control (the things that are, are). Only through relinquishing pride am I ever going to be able to approach feeling content.
In a nutshell, stop thinking you have the ability to be perfect or have let anyone down and just keep trying to contribute positively which you’re doing already if you let yourself see it.
I know these philosophical responses can feel unhelpful to someone facing issues that seem to require practical solutions, apologies it that’s the case but you sound like a change of mindset may help you stop being so hard on yourself.
I hear you man. I get where the feelings are coming from, I get why you don’t want to just pretend to yourself that everything is OK. It’s not ok, you feel responsible for your situation in it and the impact its having on others.
I think it’s fine to put down in words and feel everything you just have. Only thing I’d put into this is that you’re only human, and only you are living your life. I think understanding everything you’ve set out here is good, shows self awareness and a clear desire to get to a better place.. I guess I would just say ok, you’ve been self aware, you get it, now stop beating yourself up. You are where you are and in this day and age even if some of the details do feel like they’re on you, a whole bunch won’t be.
Keep going, you’ll come out of this. You’re not a loser, you’re just someone who hasn’t won their battle yet. No judgement from me, you’re not a loser until you give up. Don’t give up.
As a mom, I can say that I am proud of you. I know your mom is too. You are trying your best and that matters.
I have medical issues/limited income and I would never ever want any of my sons to focus their lives only on me for the rest of their lives. We want our children to be happy in their own lives and not worry about us constantly. Moms know how to take care of ourselves.
Everything will be okay, things are turning around. Congratulations on your new job
You control what you can and make peace with what you can’t, you don’t need to internalize outcomes as a way of judging yourself. Nobody ever controls outcomes, only inputs.
Most of us are just one or two bad days away from being in what we’d consister to be a disaster. Sounds like your family got hit with several of those kinds of days, stemming from factors outside your control.
Being a man just means doing what you can to help. Sometimes that even means needing to help yourself first in order to be able to help others. It’s obviously not because you don’t care because clearly you do. In the meantime, just focus on the practical things that need to happen and execute relentlessly against that list of practical steps.
It’s like that battlefield mindset, how do soldiers manage to continue functioning when everything is falling apart? Many can’t, but those that do, they focus on the necessary things relevant to that moment so that they can survive. They will work on processing what’s happened later on when they’re out of the woods. So do the same here, List out all the problems, and next to each problem, list out the SMALL steps you’d need to take to start moving towards a solution eventually. Then do those steps. It takes all the pent-up mental anxiety out of your head onto the paper, and then you can stop worrying and just do the things on the paper knowing that you’re doing the right things to deal with it. No more mental energy needed.
Welcome to adulthood!
OP, you’re not a fuck up.
From your post, it seems you’re a kind, caring son and brother who is having to deal with a lot of crappy circumstances outside your control.
I know that can feel awful when no matter what you do, nothing seems to work because one way or another it’s just out of your hands.
It’s a hard lesson to learn and even harder to put into practice, but we must care for ourselves first before taking on the burdens of someone else. Even family.
If you have good friends/family that you can be vulnerable with, go ahead and cry with them. Letting out this stress and pressure is critical. Keeping all that bottled up is nothing more than a slow poison. Let it out. As long as those feelings are filling you up inside, you won’t be able to fit in any hope and positive things. At least not properly.
Instead of being ashamed that your friends are supporting you in various ways, be proud that you have been a good friend and person to them, so much so that they are willing to help you out in those ways. It is a humbling experience for sure, but it is dignified and not shameful because you have earned that help.
Take things one day at a time, make a list of priorities, and go. Be kind to yourself along the way and do your best. It’s all any of us can do.
Good luck, OP.
Keep your head up. I’ve been in worse credit and financial positions, and things pick up with consistent hard work and devotion to your life. Credit score is not the measure of the man. It’s a hard world out there and there are a lot of people who start on third base with family money and security that make things look easy.
Once you have money coming in, hire a credit repair firm and they’ll send disputes and chip away at all the negative marks. You’ll be back on top in 2 years.
As a father, I want nothing more from my son than to know he’s trying to live as good a life as he can. As long as I know he’s happy to be alive, I’m happy to have him as my son. It’s not right for me to demand more from him than that.
Don’t be too hard on yourself, life has clearly been rough. Sounds like you did everything you possibly could to improve your situation but life constantly threw you curveballs. I know this sounds like a patronizing response, but keep applying to places and getting better positions and for every opportunity you get, do your absolute best and thing will start to improve. My thoughts are with you.
PS: crying is cathartic and it is not a weakness. Just try not to stay in your sadness.