To ask what in life has made you saddest and how you ever got over it?

[Danceswithduck]

Something in life hasn’t worked out I hoped / expected it would. It feels a bit like heartbreak - that’s all I can liken it to.
Im so sad and could cry all the time. I cannot say what it is as it is so identifying to me.

What made you the saddest you’ve ever been and how did you get over it? Or learn to live with it?

@SirChenjins
Exactly! @LoisLane66 was expressing what she feels very much as a loss, and the implication from some PPs has been that her loss is nowhere near as bad as others' losses, and therefore she has no entitlement to have those feelings.
But they are her feelings, and just as valid as anyone else's.
As you say, @SirChenjins, it almost becomes like a competition.

@Sartre I had the same experience except discovered it at 12 week scan and was by myself as H at work- straight from scan room up to a ward. I was in shock couldn't stop trembling

My brother dying young. The sadness was just shocking, overwhelming. It seemed to change everything - until recently I thought of my life in two sections, before his death and after it. It's been a few years now, and I'll agree with PP that the sadness doesn't go away, I've just learnt to carry it. I'm pleased to report that I am more or less back to my previous, shallow self (I enjoy Selling Sunset, for example). I'm not sure what I've done to get here - face up to it, I suppose. I don't feel like I had much choice.

I don't want to bring the tone down but I've been fairly lucky with not losing many people. However my cat died aged 18 nearly 10 years ago and I still miss her dreadfully. I had her from being a tiny kitten and she loved me to bits too.

I lost my best friend to cancer very quickly four years ago and I'm over that now. I found out she didn't love me as much as I loved her after she died which was painful but I came to terms with it.

I miss my little cat more and can't bear to have another one.

That sounds really sad. Is there anything you really want to do one day? Maybe see a coach or therapist to work out what that is and build up your confidence. Your DH shattered it but it doesn't have to be like that forever.

Maybe train for something you can do as a freelancer once the children are older: massage therapist; counsellor; hairdresser; piano teacher; swimming teacher; web designer; wedding photographer; osteopath; crafter etc. These are all things you can do part time and maybe fit them round the children. You just need a bit of support and encouragement.

God, these posts are so sad. Reading them, I kept thinking of some lines from a Larkin poem:

"We should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time."

The longer I live, the more convinced I am kindness is the most important thing in life. It's the first thing I look for in someone. If they have a kind heart, I can forgive them almost anything.

The breakdown of my marriage and watching my Husband literally change overnight.
It has shocked everyone to the core as we were so happy and everyone who knew us never thought he would be capable of such cruelty. He became a different person overnight and began a campaign of brutal, cruel behaviour to justify the fact he was having an affair! I hate him for how he treated me and the depths of despair he sent me too. I was even prescribed Valium it was that bad.
Add this, my Dad dying, my Mum's terminal illness and infertility. Although I'm glad I didn't have children now. I don't know how I'll keep if he gets the OW pregnant.

My abortion after being raped.

What a poignant post.

Imagine a world where everyone was kind to one another. I'd like to live there.

I suffered my ex husband walking out, a terminal diagnosis for my dad (and subsequent death 2 months later) and an unexpected pregnancy in the space of 4 weeks. In terms of getting over it, I think the only solution is time and pragmatism. Accepting you can’t change things, rationalising (why would anyone want to be with a man who leaves his pregnant wife for another woman?), and occasionally just wallowing in the misery of it (we often take a stiff upper lip approach, I think) with the proviso of ‘if I sit here and cry all afternoon, tomorrow I am getting up, going to work and going out with my friends in the evening’ is all you can do. You do have to kind of wade through the shit with the shit coming over the top of your wellies…I think if you try to go round the shit, you end up in deeper over a longer period of time, it just takes longer to get where you need to be.

Find comfort in the small stuff, the changing seasons, a new pair of shoes, slobbery kiss from the dog…..whatever works.

Lots of very painful stories here

I find that being around nature helps me, knowing that the sun still comes up, trees will be there in 40 years etc

My brother and sister died from their terminal illness within a few months of each other when we were teens. I lost 7 babies, and my living daughter has the same illness as my siblings and one day I will lose her too. I will never find peace with it but I carry on living and dealing with it day by day.

Life is so unfair, it made me lose my religion as having faith in someone who ruined your life is impossible. There is no plan, there is no trust.

Also, knowing that however painful a situation may be, it won't always hurt quite this much

I agree. If anyone asks me about my religion I say kindness.

There is so much we cannot know about the bigger questions, but we do know that kindness is the main positive force for good, so we can just get on with that and let the big questions lie.

One of the things that has helped me get over my OH's death is bizarrely the knowledge that people die all the time. Seeing at as simply part of the natural order is for me somehow comforting - I cannot explain why.

I agree with this, when my DB took his own life at 18 I visited an old church and seeing all the old gravestones inside really helped. I always remember one in particular, the grave of a child who had died at the age of 8 over a hundred years ago. It was comforting, can't explain why, it just was. Something to do with the fact tragedy and heartbreak has happened in time immemorial, and this was nothing bad or unusual to happen to our family, it was entirely normal and everything would be ok eventually.

Making plans with my dad for a trip he had always wanted to take, but couldn't whilst mum was alive (she had died just a few months beforehand). We talked about the things/places we would see, except dad was dying (he knew, as did the rest of the family), so we both knew the trip would never happen but just listening to him getting swept up with the excitement of it all broke my heart. I hope I will go on "his" holiday in the not-to-distant future.

I don’t grudge LoisLane her post despite having faced many of the same situations other people have posted about here as something they’ll never get over yet, the one that still causes me pain (despite me being happy) is the breakdown of my then almost 40 year plus marriage.

Having an absolutely lousy childhood, a severely disabled now adult child, cancer, still having to deal with the fuckedupedness of my birth father being who he is, plus a whole lot more besides, it’s my marriage that still has me walking as if I have a stone in my shoe. The pain and sadness never goes away but I have a good and happy life.

Loislane can have her upset because for her it’s very real and who knows what else she’s been through in life thats brought her to this.

@Rosiethecat15

Bless you and your son💐 I really felt your post and how you must have felt saying the words your heart just desperately wishes to be true.

Don't beat yourself up for lying. You gave something to your gran that will have made her heart sing and we both know what we would give for that.

My dd is non verbal and stuck in time like your son and always will be. I could never have imagined what it was like to mourn something that hasn't actually passed away but something that should have been but never will be. It's a feeling like no other. Sending you 💐 and a hug xxx

Losing a beloved animal is just as painful as losing a human imho.
I wanted to lie down & die beside our much loved Irish wolfhound. He was my hairy baby after losing 3 babies & my heart is still broken, I’ve never felt whole since his passing, even more than when my dear dad died.

No it makes sense. I think my mum is well but I even struggle with the idea I'm going to lose her one day. She's been my rock forever. Things like this do help, still an unbearable thought though!

I've had some rubbish things happen in last few years and often felt very alone.. and they're really nothing like some of the pain OPs have had to go through.
I am a natural optimist (and wasnt allowed to express emotions etc as a Child too so have learnt to crack on but I'm OK with that).
My technique is to allow myself a very short time to wallow but I realised during the pandemic that I have for many many years been practising mindfulness without knowing it. That works better for me. But everyone is different.
So walking the dog, in the rain especially.
Lovely coffee in a nice cup (my thing is a fry up brekkie too)
Listening to a Spotify playlist of fave songs.
Reading something interesting
Learning something new
Helping another person
At the end of the day reflecting on what was good- even if it was just that cup of coffee.
It kind of pushes the dark away.
My children and pets give me a reason to get up each day and carry on.
Eventually it's true you don't just force yourself up.
Everything passes.
One of my favourite quotes (it's a proverb but more commonly known as a song) is
' there is a season for everything and everything has its season'. This too shall pass.

I know what you mean. Weirdly, I find stories of silly or instant deaths comforting as well. For example, I remember reading about a couple who went to the park. They sat on a bench, she lent her head against his shoulder and sighed and when he looked down she was dead. I remember another story about someone who was found dead at the breakfast table, with the radio on and a spoon still in their hand - just sat there with a bowl of cornflakes in front of them.

Maybe it's because stories like that make death seem mundane and absurd. It doesn't take away the loss, but it does kind of de-mystisy death and make it seem trivial, almost comic. Also, it's nice to be reminded that not everyone dies slowly and painfully.

Being reminded how small and insignificant we are can be a comfort too. Astronomy and geology are good for that. When you grasp how tiny the Earth is
(like a grain of sand in the Sahara desert), that puts everything into perspective. It's the same with geology. I went to the coast at the weekend, and there was a lovely new visitor centre with information about the geological history of the area. There were also fossils in a glass display box. To read that 50 million years ago our local coast was tropical, with giant sharks swimming about, and that 100,000 years ago that same bit of land was under an ice sheet, with bison and woolly rhinos, I mean, it makes my worries seem ridiculous.

Definitely not as bad as a loss as some people. But losing my twins in the 1st trimester and being told they both had no heartbeats a week apart and not having my husband in the room with me at both times. Having failed miscarriage treatment, two haemorrhages and watching my best friends all become mums and announce their pregnancies. So bittersweet. It gets a little easier every month. I know once I’m pregnant again and have a healthy baby all the heartbreak will be worth it

The saddest was the death of my mother. I was 28 and she went downhill so quickly we couldn't process it.

Secondary to that my best friend withdrew from my life, and I miss her every day. There's no hostility, just a sad and prolonged ghosting. I was a mess, so I get it. But I wish she was still in my life.