To ask about your moments of realisation?

[Spanglylycra]

Driving to work yesterday. Sat in traffic at the lights I suddenly had a lightbulb moment about my job, a what the fuck am I doing wasting my time moment?!

This came after a few weeks very stressful and emotional that have been very full on at work. This week mildly better and I felt like I'd just hit a calm spot and thought that's it I've had enough, not stressed or upset just realised that's it and it's like a strange calm has come over me!

So I wondered if you have had a moment like this did you act upon the feeling and did it work?

I was walking the dog a couple of weeks ago and stopped in my tracks when I realised the reason I've driven myself into the ground pleasing others and feeling utterly inferior all my life is because I've spent my life trying to impress my parents, which is pointless as they much prefer my golden child brother. I'm devastated to see all those family memories through these new eyes, but it's made everything fall in to place and make more sense.

Didntwanttochangemyname yep, same here. Did they instil in you a sense of you have to impress them?

When my mum died and I realised I didn’t have to put up with my emotionally abusive, addict sister any more. I went no contact after years of trying because I knew it would hurt mum if I stopped. Only positive thing to come out of my lovely mums death.

@user , happy enough to benefit from other peoples hard work tho. Who pays for your kids?

Getting into top stream at secondary – that last teacher I’d had for three years who though I’d be lucky to get into second stream perhaps wasn’t a good judge of what I was capable of.

GCSE results - that I wasn't thick.

Walk home with someone who was causing me issue on my university course - she suddenly started via transfer from another university in second year was trying to exclude me from my normal group I worked with. Luckily my best friend wasn't having it as there was major price of field work where you had to work with others coming up with lots of marks.

Anyway she spent entire walk calling me thick and lazy. I thought I'm not there's something wrong - went to disability office and started processes that got me tested for dyslexia which wasn’t easy or free - turns out I had dyslexia and dyspraxia and last lot of exams got extra time in exams – apparently many of my teachers and lectures has suspected as much.

First proper professional job – I didn’t have to wait full 12 months to try and get a new job but could get out as soon as I could. Had some awful interviews – thought last one where due to trains I was really late went badly but no got the job and paid considerably more as well.

That before ever event I’d have to interact with new people my Mum would ring and tell me how crap I was with people. She rang me during work day in second job to tell me that about an evening meeting – I just thought no I’m not and pointed out what she was doing. She never did it again – so suspect she hadn’t realised.

I've had 2 in my life.

The first was when I had just been told second hand that I wouldn't be getting the pay rise at work I was promised for taking on extra responsibility at work (the people in the same role where being paid a third more than me). I had felt undervalued and demeened for over a year and it was a job that was dull and just not me. I handed in my notice that moment and left 2 days later (was paid in lieu of notice).
I have started college to finish my degree and do a years teacher training. With student loans and tax credits to help, we are actually better off financially while I study than we were when I worked (I didn't know this when I quit).

The second more important one was that I had always worried about everything, from bills to losing people I love. My mum was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer and in that moment everything was put into perspective.
My mum is ok now, nearly 8 years later and I wake up every morning thankful for that day. I understand now that most of the things you worry about never happen and the bad things come as a bolt out of the blue that worrying won't stop anyway.

The most profound 'come to a standstill in the middle of the street' type of realisation I had was not just intellectually knowing that myself and everyone I love was going to die but feeling it - like there was this long minute where I just sort of stood there breathing in and out realising graveyards and the like aren't just something we pass on the way to work, they're where we are all going. Everyone I love, every historical figure whose biography I've ever devoured, every anon I pass on the street, every weathered headstone.

I felt the huge weight of time and the fact that it runs out and centuries of human history hit me at once, it was like a punch to the face and it took a long time to 'recover'.

I made some radical changes to my life that day and having just experienced that feeling again recently am about to make some more.

Such an eye opening post. Thanks everyone

I've recently had one that while I am very useful to my workplace, my work is not very useful to me. I've had smoke blown up my arse for years about being strong and valued but it would take a new job to be created for me to be promoted and despite all the talk, it's becoming clear that they've no intention of doing that.

So i need to go elsewhere and shake off this misguided sense of loyalty that i have to the place. The commute is long, the pay is not what i could have been on given my qualifications and while i like the people there, the culture is not very family friendly.

When exh announced once the dc had left home we could get a bungalow for just the 2 of us.
Fuck that mate.
The week we bought a house!!
Split up 6 months later.

What a thought provoking thread.

That no matter what I did, who I became, or how hard I tried, I couldn't make my dad want to be in my life and by keep trying I was only hurting myself because he really, really didn't give a shit. It wasn't my fault, it's just how it was.

Life is much simpler now.

I realised that I was a doormat-people-pleaser (rather than the person everyone relied on and liked) when several people in the same week just assumed I would do work for them that they couldn’t be bothered to do and not one of them asked or said please.

One sent an email with their course work in it, not even a greeting never mind a “please help”, just the actual questions they wanted me to answer.

Another told me they had told their daughter I would do something for her and they were annoyed they couldn’t get hold of me. Again they hadn’t asked me and the first I heard of it was when they rang up to tell me off for not answering my phone the day before because now the daughter’s work would be late.

I didn’t answer my phone for about a week while I worked out who was a friend and who was a user. I went through my address book and deleted people. It was very cathartic.

I woke up one morning with sore swollen eyes and a sore throat from sobbing over the treatment my then Husband was dishing out to me.

This was the 1970's, I had given up a promising career, my studying, seeing my friends and family to please him, but nothing had improved, and despite supperting him financially while he studied, he was constantly dipping into a joint savings account that I had set up and was the sole contributer to.

I felt so low that morning but had a lightbulb moment that I was a nice person and I really didn't deserve to feel like this, and however difficult separating from him was going to be, I didn't care any more what people were going to say, how ostricised I might be the current misery was just not worth it.
I suddenly found strength from that realisation and within 7 days he had gone home to "mum"

I never looked back and have had a happy second marriage, but it made me realise that whatever efforts you make you cannot change anyone!

My dad died when I was a child. I became very aware that all of us are mortal. I'm not scared of being dead, the process is potentially worse, and missing someone who has died. He was overworked and replaced by 3 people despite a recession. Work should enhance your life. Work to live, not live to work.

I've never been cool. One day as a teenager I heard laughter behind me and paronia kicked in that the people were laughing at me then thinking, who cares if they are or not, I like me. Very liberating.

A conversation in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where Ford explains to Arthur that it's just perfectly normal paronia. I feel my petty stresses and no one else cares because they all have their own too.

Realising that I was being messed around and being given mixed signals by my first attempt at romance. Gave him an ultimatum and swiftly moved on after the deadline.

Getting very drunk and realising that I really liked one of my friends. Reader, I married him (quite a few years later with much sober behaviour in between)

Realising that I didn't have to take my mother's negativity on the phone, and that I could hang up on her. When she began blackmailing me about a family occasion, I didn't have to accept the emotional burden, I gave her ownership back and said "OK, that's your choice". She didn't like it, but longer term she has treated me much better since realising that I'm not going to be the doormat to her emotions.

My first serious boyfriend split up with me when I was 20. It was love at first sight and the world seemed to stop when I met him. A year later and I was still missing him but one night I suddenly thought it’s been a year, the same amount of time we had been together and he could have been with someone else for a year and not thought about me once. It was the wake up call I needed!

I was at a conference in a romantic city. Walking around on my own at night, I saw an elderly couple holding hands and talking happily to each other.

The thought just hit me that my DH and I would never be that couple. I still loved him very much but I realised that we would not last the distance. Our marriage lasted another ten years or so, but I knew from that night.

2 years into an English degree,looking out of the window whilst the lecturer was wittering on about the importance of food in "Cranford" and wondering why I was there when I could be out there earning. As I was a couple of weeks later.

I was in a cafe with my toddler and got talking to an old man. (I was thinking about an ongoing conversation my DH and I were having about trying for another baby).
He told me he was 85. He and his wife had only ever had one child and he wished they'd had more. He actually said "you never regret having a child, but you always regret not having one".
His words were like a lightning bolt. DD was born 11 months later.

The day I sobbed my entire two hour train journey to work because I couldn't face going in. I left and it was the best decision ever.

user3691215 hear hear agree with every single word.

It hit me recently that i cannot imagine retiring with my long term partner. We've got no common interests ( i like ealking, cycling, reading, music) he likes xbox at 46, fishing and his idea of physical is a blow job or walking from house to car. He likes all inclusive i like self catering freedom....
I think we'll kill each other.

When MIL and FIL turned up unannounced on my doorstep with a visitor knowing that I was too polite/scared of them making a scene to turn them away. And then, while they were here they started telling me who they were bringing each month for a free holiday (we’d moved to London) many of whom we didn't know!

I suddenly saw clearly that I was just a free bed and cook to them and that they had no consideration for my feelings, home or life at all. I was also going through ivf but we hadn’t told them (because MIL had said on more than one occasion that “ivf babies weren’t meant to be born”) and I just got so stressed at having to hide all the paperwork and paraphernalia and drugs all the time not knowing when they would just arrive.

DH had a word. Told them they would have to stay in a hotel from then on.

They never came again. Funny that.

Realised that after two decades of accommodating and prioritising my inlaws' needs and wants over my own, dh's, our children and my family's that it doesn't matter, they will still think the worst and throw a tantrum over an imagined slight. I now know that I have to live my best life with dh and my children and prioritise those that love us unconditionally. They can all go to the back of the line now and stay there.

Enjoyed reading everyone's posts. Really interesting and inspiring.