To ask for your “That’s it, I’m done” moment?

[AutumnAesthetic]

Name changed.

I think we can all agree 2020-2022 has been, for most, an absolute gut punch.

I have noticed on here lately (and in the real world actually) that so many people are feeling a real apathy and a sense of “I’m done” BUT not many people can place exactly why, generally feeling it’a just the past few years of stress that has finally taken its toll and now they feel like everything’s a bit hopeless and won’t get better any time soon.

Can you pin point your own personal moment? The straw that broke the camels back I suppose.

my own example is below, feel free to skip it’s just an example:

For myself, it was one day last week. I had some washing and drying to catch up on, bathed both kids and cleaned the house. At the end of the night I looked at the meter and we had used £16 of electric, in a day! Usually use about £5-6. A few moments later received a phone call from the husband of a friend who recently passed away with cervical cancer, we were talking and he said she had been trying to get her smear booked in during 2020 and it was delayed and delayed and he believes if she had gotten the appointment when she initially tried, she might still be with us.

And that was it, after I hung up I sat down and had a little cry. It was my “that’s it, I’m done” moment.

I haven’t been able to shake the feeling since, it’s opened the door up to looking at all the things that have happened the past two years and accepting that yes, it’s all been pretty horrible and I’ve been doing the very British thing of stiff upper lip, crack on and don’t complain.

Thanks in advance for sharing, if you choose to ♥️

Oh you don’t know how much this means, honestly. Thank you for getting round to it ♥️

I've had many, many individual "I'm done" moments, and they have led to me cutting off relationships which were really harming me, doing things other people didn't want me to, and not doing things which I was only doing to please other people. Now I have more time for the people who love me and the things that matter to me.

I live in one of the very coldest, windiest and generally bleakest parts of the UK. Winter here is hard, expensive and long (and frequently dangerous). In past years, it has been very hard on my mental health, but a couple of years ago I accidentally stumbled on something that really lifts my mood in the darkest parts of the Winter. I planted a couple of pots (very small ones, due to almost no budget!) with Winter-flowering polyanthus, daisies and pansies. To be fair, the pansies were mangled by the wind, even in the relatively sheltered spot I chose, but the daisies and polyanthus flowered bravely through the storms, the frost and the floods. Every day when I went outside to trudge through the mud and feed the livestock, I would see the flowers and feel a little surge of hope. It reminded me that Spring would come, that the darkness would end and that one day I would step outside and feel my skin warmed by the sun. That hope of physical improvements transferred itself to other areas of my life. I try never to tackle the huge areas of worry, but concentrate on the tiny things I can do. I can't fix the economy or magic up enough money to live on, but if I can scrape together an extra portion of something to freeze, I can feel hopeful that there is now one less meal I have to miss in order to feed my children.

If you think you have symptoms of cervical cancer, please do not book a smear: contact your GP. Smears are not the correct test for anyone with symptoms. What a tragedy that your friend didn't realise that, despite being a vet, OP. It just goes to show how important it is to get the message out.

OP, as soon as I read your post I called my GP to book my smear which I had forgotten about with all that's going on.

I can understand you feeling the way you do. It feels like it is just more and more bad news each day. I've had lots of these moments over the last few years. The first for me actually predates covid, it was the Brexit result. I've had many of these moments since then.

I guess what keeps me going, is the good people in my life and the good moments.

We are in the fortunate position of being able to pay bills without worrying, but a close relative was 37th in the corridor queue at our local hospital last weekend. I was getting updates from her DD while I scoured pharmacies for my DS’ essential meds, which are having a “supply issue” that (according to the MHRA) ended in August. And I’ve had 4 no-shows for interviews for a 30k pa job in my team that nobody wants to do. I’m not someone who normally freaks out over geopolitics but I’m getting a real sense of doom. And I don’t have any confidence that things will change when the government dies.

Feeling I've existed not lived since late 2019.

Fucking 16 degrees in October. It makes me want to cry because I worry about what's coming.

I'm fed up of being resilient, I've done it all my life.

I had a horrible lockdown with animals for ex-neighbors whilst I worked long hours through it.

And now inflation, the energy crisis, completely incompetent and selfish government and hurdling towards a huge crash.

All this is making me feel my age. It's not one thing, its all things. It is glaringly apparent that everyone is out for themselves and I am fed up of the assumption that the community will support those less fortunate just like in the "good old days".

If I see one more article about how to eat cheaper, heat our homes cheaper I am going to scream.

We pay taxes, work and we all deserve a decent life.

Yeah, I need a smear too (ugh! ) better get that booked.

I was done on 24th Feb 2022. This was the day in UK that covid restrictions officially ended but then Putin invaded Ukraine on the same day. I was so done……can we not just have one day without misery, uncertainty, anxiety and drama?

• 2 years of Covid bullshit.
• A new job, which I'm loving now, but which was pretty horrendous for the first 4 months. I also started, did 2 weeks in the office, and was then sent home for several months in the 2021 winter WFH mandate.
• DH was diagnosed as partially deaf and now wears 2 hearing aids - and has been doing his best to stay chipper, but it's really devastated him.
• Both parents have had cancer this year (including mum needing a mastectomy), but are thankfully doing well.
• CoL crisis and inflation which means we aren't doing all of the usual meals out, coffees, day trips, weekend breaks that used to give life a lot of colour.
• DH lost his job recently.
• Friends are so busy/useless/flaky that I've given up on them.

That's about it! And I'm still VERY fortunate compared to so many.

I’m feeling this right now. Am in bed and can’t even be bothered to get up.

Question Time last night was devastating. Hearing teachers talk about schools, psychiatrists talk about mental health services, doctors about hospitals…all whilst the effing Tory MP parroted about record amounts of spending… All topped off with the pronouncement that it’s too late to prevent global warming to the extent desired.

To be honest, I think Putin might as well press the button. I’m 58 years old and have never before felt the world is so done for.

Friends. Some for which you give your all and in the end you are taken for granted. I’m really done with that and have been for a while.

I was done the moment I realised that I could never ever accept or forgive my DH . Then I was stuck with him for Covid lockdown.
Now I can not bear to hear the news as the mortgage rises mean I may lose my home.
But I also feel like I am not the only one anxious and struggling which oddly gives me comfort.

Underlined for emphasis !

Interesting that yours is about the cost of living op. Economics is important: politics is important: the (dis)organisation of the country is essential and something we should all be talking about. We pay taxes, work and we all deserve a decent life., couldn’t agree more.

The annoying thing is we can all see that it’s a car crash in slow motion, we all know everything is going wrong, and yet we seem unable in a much vaunted ‘democracy’ to stop it. My recipe would start with rebuilding councils and continue with housing.

I have had a few ‘I’m done’ moments over the years as I come from a poor background anyway and in common with the rest of the country’s direction seem to be constantly running up vanishing staircases. The most recent is through working in education and being expected to do more and more for free, while I have no safety net or margins myself, and being constantly being judged by higher and higher standards on poorer and poorer wages by those who have always had those safety nets.

When I had to take my darling cat to be put to sleep, three days after I'd been to my best friend's funeral. That was a bleak day.
I have somehow managed to tap into unknown reserves of strength though, because four days later I interviewed for and got a significant promotion.
Sending strength and solidarity to everyone.

I’m sorry you feel like this. I don’t agree though. Two years ago my life was over and I wanted out.

I went to a local am dram performance last night it was bloody fab and it lit a joy in me. tickets for both of us £20 and that is the first time in a long time

yes I love free radio and company in the form of radio 4

but bugger me people are a lot nicer than I realised.

I have two child and it’s hard work single parent no benefits and an unpleasant ex
daily walks
library
volunteering for scouts etc

When I applied for a new job because I can't take putting up with the low level harassment and mental abuse from a member of staff (NHS) who has accused me of all sorts of awful things to try to deflect from their own lazy incompetence.

I love my job and hate that this person has driven me from it but I hope when I finally walk away from her the relief will be worth it.

Also booked smear next week !

Mine is a work one. There over 10 years, smallish team, manager semi seconded over to another team in a different location.

Rest of team start taking the piss, not coming into work on time, or at all, saying they would WFH, not completing time sensitive reports, leaving as early as they wanted ect but as keyholder I had to fill in. An actual friend who was high up in IT offered, out of the blue , to keep the master copies of my work on his server with the local copies my team had secured or something. Start to be ostracized from my team, it was horrible, I had a knot in my stomach every time I went into work. Boss on the phone 10 -15 times a day micro managing me.
Boss takes permanent position in the other team, comes in to do handover meetings with HR and big boss present.
She marches in , slams files of printouts on her desk and screamed that I need to be fired because she has proof that I'd basically done fuck all work for months. HR stop her & I leave the room to find my IT friend waiting outside I then tell him " Fuck this, I've been stitched up " At that moment I was done grabbed my stuff, chucked my lanyard in the bin.
Big boss stopped me mouthing apologies, my IT friend had all the evidence that the rest of the team, with my managers help, had been altering the data on reports so it looked like I'd not done them, or any work.
Long story short, manager had a private deal with the other 2 in the team that when she moved to new job they could have the manager position as a job share BUT I was more highly qualified so she needed me out of the way.
In the end I had 6weeks of paid leave while HR , investigated . I was given a raise ect and got to choose eam I wanted to work in, but I left less than a year later.

Mine came last year after I listened to parents at the school gate absolutely slating the laziness of a committee i chaired.

We started donkeys years ago running a playscheme for a week in the summer. Over the years it grew and grew, but stayed fully volunteer led and low cost. Before covid we were running morning and afternoon sessions in all holidays (£10 a week), and a before and after school club (£10 a week for both).

We weren’t just a couple of Mums letting the kids run around the hall, even though we were volunteers. I worked in schools all my working life. The other volunteers and committee members were teachers on career breaks, a retired HT, and we had built really strong links with the local college and nearest Uni so we had quite a number of trainee teachers and childcare workers over the years. It became a running joke that people would join us for 2/3 years then go off and get a job that paid actual wages.

Covid closed us for a long time because we run in the school building and outside hires didn’t restart for ages.

Eventually we were asked to run the breakfast club again, but the school didn’t have a regular janitor/caretaker at that point so we could only open at 8am, not 7.30 as previous. And only for children at that school - not the other primary (we used to do a walking bus as it’s only 5 mins away) until the council restrictions had been lifted.

On day one five parents complained about the late start. On day two three complained about it. On day three a parent from the other school tried to drop off their child and complained loud and furiously about discrimination.

The following Monday while collecting my own DD I heard a group of parents at the gate complaining about the lack of after school care and the fact there was no playscheme in the upcoming holidays. The final comment that was my “done” moment was “They’re probably all too used to their furlough money now. Lazy buggers”

I resigned at the next meeting. In the last year the entire committee has resigned after more grief from parents. The school offer breakfast club now for 15 mins before the bell. No after school club, but apparently after Christmas a private company is setting up and it’ll be around £20 a day.

I don’t care anymore. I quit all my volunteering stuff and focus solely on my family now. People are even more horribly entitled and rude since lockdowns.

“Resilience” is imo an unhelpful and rather patronising concept because when it is unpicked, it relies on practical and pragmatic matters that too many people do not have access to in a broken system. It is no use constantly using mystical meaningless slogans to criticise people facing practical and real problems.

Talking of which, I meant to add my sympathies to those in ill health.

Every backbone has a weight limit

They're not unbreakable

💐

I'm old (for MNet) and have lived through IRA terrors, the 10 day war, the Falklands, Iraq, the three day week, remembering bombsite in the 60s, 15% inflation, the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s recessions.

It's cyclical and all these things pass but for those who are vulnerable when they happen they seem insurmountable.

I think we are still coming to terms with the social destabilisation that Covid wrought.

I am done with the NHS and fortunately have choices. I am minded to campaign for improvements to bureaucracy and attitude.

When one of my delightful yr8 charges told me to "f*CK off, you annoying cow" during an enrichment session (really fun too).

I have just a guy over the last 2.5yrs with covid. I have worked my arse off at school. But nothing is good enough, ever. Kids, parents, management, society, government. I am done. I am so fed up of justifying myself and my actions to all and sundry.

Am looking to leave teaching. There's got to be more to life than this.

This I think is precipitated by a general malaise about the the state of the country and world. I am very much in a "sod this, I'm doing what I bl**dy well want!" frame of mind at the moment.