My brother died last November, and my older sister a couple of years ago. Our parents are long gone, and now it’s just my little sister and me from our original nuclear family.

I know you’ve had some health issues. So have I. I just keep trying to move forward

You’re not alone in thinking there must be something more. I certainly hope there is. I believe there is. Please don’t give up.

Last edited Thu Sep 4, 2025, 12:41 AM - Edit history (1)

And I know that you care for me too
So I don't feel alone
Or the weight of the stone
Now that I've found somewhere safe
To bury my bone
And any fool knows a dog needs a home
And shelter from pigs on the wing

Your contributions here have been enormous and I am grateful for all the times you’ve made me smile.

You can post here, complain, rant and rave, find hope, and share loss.

I woke up angry yesterday, really angry, with the thought running through my dream that *It didn’t have to happen this way*
And that made me intolerable for hours, to my poor husband and especially to me.

I hated being that angry, that’s not me… but it was, for a little while.

...and we get it.

I'm honored you're sharing the cruddy stuff with us, too. It's what friends, neighbors, community members are for.

Do remember, though, that feelings can change from day to day, if you just hang on. No big turnarounds, necessarily, but if you just hang on, one day at a time, at some point you'll be able to look back and say "Better now than it was then."

And we'll be here for you each day, too.

lovingly,
Bright

...of humor, man."

I'm an admirer. We don't know each other personally, but what I know of you makes me an admirer."

I'm sorry for the pain, sorry you must endure it, but endure it as you can. You must have lived long enough to know that change is possible.

I can't crash. I have people who depend on me.

Things have happened that are causing me to feel like this, and I don't know what the hell to do.

I'm in big ass trouble.

I've been here before and pulled through.

It feels like this time, I won't.

I hate myself for posting this negative bullshit, but I'm in trouble. And I'm ashamed.

A family member is severely mentally ill. She's incredibly intelligent and exceedingly kind.. She loves me to pieces. I talked to my wife about taking her in, letting her live here, and she agreed. I then found out that this family member had some kind of incident an incident involving a knife that they have to go back to court for. I cannot have this person in my home considering this.

I'm losing friends like I never meant a goddamn thing to them. and I'm not sure why, except that no one wants anything to do with you when you are down...only when you can make them laugh, listen to them, or help them out. It feels like everything is a lie. Every word I hear in my real life sounds like a fucking lie.

I'm in trouble. Don't know what to do. Going to just take it minute by minute. I'm at the point where I'm hoping I don't wake up tomorrow. I'm praying for that. Too much has happened in the last month.

...on the dead friend who I never met:

The thing is...I've spent my life doing things that I thought were impossible. and I've taken pride in my accomplishments.

I'm guessing that my male friends have left because they are more fucked up than I am. Good people, smart people, both lost their high paying jobs...mental illness and addicts. Both of these individuals cut all of their friends out of their lives, including me. I'm taking it personally.

A friend of 41 years contacted me out of the blue a few weeks ago. We hadn't seen each other face to face for about 6 years. He reached out...he kept texting me over and over until I called him. He has a very serious health problem and likely won't survive. I told him I will go to the hospital with him when the time comes, and not leave his side.

Loss after loss after loss...can't talk to my spouse too much about it. I can't bring her down with me.

8 day recent hospital stay and the problem is recurring and unresolved.

Eye injections that make words and letters look like a tic tac toe game. The jury is out on whether I will go blind from this.

And the only people I can talk to are on here...so I type.

Also lost a friend for reasons that I can't put into words because I don't understand it at all.

I'm outgoing and dependable and I make people laugh...and everyone is all gone all of a sudden.

Lost my brother to Covid in 2021 and I can't resolve my grief.

DU is a blessing...but in real life? No one fucking cares. It's a bitter pill.

Speaking only for myself, as an old man, I feel my mortality, but in a sense, I am grateful for it; it relieves me and makes life all the more precious.

I wish there were something I could do or say to make you not feel this way.

The things you face are very real, but it is also real that you are still breathing.

Let me say something personal.

When I was in my early 20's, I stood on a hill under an oak in the backyard of the house in which I grew up, a rope tied to a high branch, the noose on the other end on my neck, standing on an inverted garbage can. How I managed to climb down from that situation I still don't know, but I do know everything seemed impossible then, all death, all disappointment, and I was still a young man, a stupid young man, but a young man all the same.

I suppose I stopped on thinking what it would do to my father to find my body there. I was saved therefore by love, not for myself, but for another.

I do know that followed all these transcendent moments, falling in love, raising my sons, living too long and not enough, mixed of course, with loss and pain, but - I think - you cannot feel pain without knowing love.

I think of all the things I would have missed. No one would have cared of course; everyone would "get over it," but now, having lived on, I care that I have learned that life, for all its misery, is precious.

I'm not a therapist - although I hope you have one, a good one - but I would guess without understanding your relationship at all, that you share with your wife, since you love her enough to not want to "drag her down." That must mean something. She may be relieved and grateful for the chance to help.

I have certainly lost friends, and my only brother may be alive but is "dead to me," and has been for decades. If though, I mourned too much for that, I would be taking away from the love I feel for my wife, my sons, and the anxious hope that there still may be some hope for humanity with all my whining and caterwauling.

Do something. Weep a bit. Weep a lot. Curse the moon, curse the stars, curse the sun, and then bask in the moonlight, live in wonder under the stars and their lives out in infinity, and when the sun comes up, say, "It is yet another morning, and still I am alive and think it a blessing of some kind, even if I cannot see how that is now."

Eventually we are all released by entropy and time, but it is best to let that rest until the it comes on its own, as it will.

Until then my friend, I am glad you have - and appreciate - DU. Let your fingers flow free here, and do not be ashamed to share your pain. We are liberals. We believe in caring for the other, and it brings us no pain to do so, and is, in fact, a source of joy that we can feel the joy of wanting to help the others among us.

Be well again.

Age is a bitch isn't it?

I too wonder with every day that passes how much longer I will be able to go on.

Like you, I have no one left (other than a tRUMP sibling that I rarely if ever hear from).

I'm very tired of my life too. It is so difficult to live with a chronic illness. You are going down and you know it. There is no recourse.

I'm sorry you are needing the shots in the eyes. I am dealing w/this same problem. I have several rather inexpensive vitamins I am taking. I can't tell much of a difference so far.

All you can do it take it one day at at time.

Hang-in there my friend.

Here's a just for the hell of it!

You can take this as sympathy, a wierd curveball to throw you off your current track, or just a strange form of entertainment:

Brain cells
A head that swells
Too much confusion
To escape this illusion
The fog is too dense
It doesn't make sense
I have no clear view
Don't know what to do

So inside I go
To that place we all know
That has no time or space
Where I live and I feel
The things that aren't real
And pass
Without leaving a trace

What should I do
Won't you give me a clue?
We all need to pull together
Will you lend me a hand
And help me to stand
Right now, tomorrow,
Or ever?

I believe I've felt the same before, as I've experienced loss ,hardship, and deceivers more times than Id like to remember.The powers that be, brought me through I believe , and I believe they will bring you through also, hang in there and do what you know to be the right thing

I just want to give you a long tight hug.... these are tough times and so surreal.... I can't make sense, so I come here to know that we are in this together

please know that so many of us know you, care about what you are feeling and want you here.....

Re-paving your neuropathways. It's key to mental health imo. It's helped me through all the obstacles and challenges I've personally had in dealing with life as it is, and what I wish it was.

It helps to handle the fear... filters it down to the moment. Ridding the pain from the past and the anxieties of the unknown/the future.

Focusing on what makes us whole, what makes us inspired, what makes us ourselves again is our choice. If we focus on the negative only, of course it may take us down. What we spend time doing, reading, talking about, listening to, etc... will take up space in our existence. I'd rather gear the former, toward what space I do have. It's not infinite, and I "just choose" because it's in my power and no one else's to do so. We have so much more power over our well-being than we think. We underestimate our strength, most certainly. If we know this, we must remember this, tell ourselves this, when we most need to hear it. I'm a staunch believer in this.

I look at it this way, if someone told me 35 years ago what I would go through, I would've jumped off a bridge. There is NO way I would have believed I could handle it. Now, here I am, fucking wiser, helping others when I can, grateful for almost every challenge I faced, as it made me who I am, and I am loved (including forever loved by those who are no longer with me), and I am good and kind. I am not as bubbly as I once was lol, but that is actually something I am specifically working on. Getting back the spirit I had .. and I'm getting there! If I didn't choose to do this (intentional action), I would never reach my goal.

We really can do it, even when we have stages in our lives that are harrowing, heartbreaking, feeling more lost than we've ever been, not knowing what to do next. These are stages. They pass with time and they do change. Change is inevitable.
When I'm in that kind of hell, change is a blessing and it can be counted on. That gets me by too. Oh and I can wait it out, cuz it takes our given choice to reach our goal ~ of having joy again, living life instead of just existing in it. Nothing is more worth waiting for.

I've battled chronic depression for almost 30 years. I've had my worst time of it in the very beginning. I fought therapy at first, in fact I didn't believe it could change how I felt. I didn't realize it would help ME change how I felt. So it was me who did it, but by the support and education from individual and definitely group therapy and for many many years. I did a serious dive into this and I worked my ass off, clawing my way out of a black hole, with a dense black cloud almost lying squarely on top of it.

It's not ever been as bad as it was then, but I had a few close calls where I was approaching another major setback and I knocked down the doors into the next group & into individual therapy. It took maybe a month or two to heal and move forward. I was stronger for it. It's a process, for some like me, we may need to do this from time to time, but forever. Still.. nothing is more worth it.

I feel, and I have seen through experience, that the struggle and the tools I use in which to battle it, gave me the beautiful stretches of time that have afforded me some of the best times of my life. Now that's saying something.

You are going through a hard time. You need to find a way to cope, to understand, and to accept, or not, the sorrow and loss you are feeling. You are the only one who can do that, and I think you will. Be nice to yourself. It takes time to absorb the blows and heal.

The one bit of advice that has helped me stay on an even keel is that some things are unacceptable. I'll try to find a way to understand why something happened, but I have been able to heal quicker knowing that some things happen for no reason.

Peace.

You are treasured.

and will be here for you.

You have to lose yourself to find yourself, LC

https://www.berkeleywellbeing.com/dark-night-of-the-soul.html

Wrap yourself in a blanket of comfort and dive into the ride, do not resist your experience 🩵

Be like the willow tree I Ching

This will pass, Love and Peace, Clouds Passing ☁️☁️

At least, imho!
Know we care! Know you are appreciated, even if we are further away, and not f2f as these people probably were.

Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute (sometimes).

Look at something beautiful, even if very sad. While I haven't suffered a bunch of losses in a short amount of time, I've had them like most older people (even middle-aged).
I know it seems trite, but I was feeling weirded out a few days ago; looking at both beautiful, and sweet screengrabs -
while I still felt some negative feelings, I also felt postive feelings "sit down" next to those.
..
Wishing you well.

and I just try to process on my own.. So, you are very brave to talk about your struggles.

Last edited Sat Sep 6, 2025, 04:25 AM - Edit history (1)