Dealing With Life’s Most Difficult Changes
By: Harry Seitz
Tags: Unemployment, Change, Homeless, Heartbreak, Stress

Dealing With Life’s Most Difficult Changes

Divorce, moving, unemployment, the death of a loved one, and a major injury or illness are considered to be the five most stressful life events.

These changes all cause loneliness, uncertainty, and depression, and often perpetuate each other. You get hurt, you lose your job, and your partner leaves you because you are no longer the person they signed up to be with, and as painful as it is, you can’t honestly blame them.

Fortunately, most of us eventually recover, and there are ways to deal with these events and the emotions that come with them.

The Death of a Loved One

Your partner, parent, or sibling dies, and your life is suddenly turned upside down. On top of the sadness of losing them, there are all of the legal ramifications to deal with, and you feel even more guilty over your anger toward the deceased for making this impossible situation even worse.

On top of still having to work, you have to reassure everyone in your life that you’re fine when you aren’t. Instead of helping and supporting you, friends and acquaintances start to feel like just another burden. And you’ll be amazed and disturbed by how quickly the dead are forgotten.

So this is how your life will probably end. You’ll hurt some, become a hassle to others, and be almost immediately forgotten by everyone else.

The best solution here is to keep on taking care of yourself, and to reach out to others for help. Some suggest friends, or counseling if necessary, but in my opinion, hiring a lawyer to deal with all the paperwork is the best way to go. You don’t need another person around who’s pretending to care, and your lawyer probably won’t do this beyond the bounds of common courtesy.

What you require is time to process your loss, so take a week or two off, hire a lawyer, and turn off your phone.

Moving

Most of us try to move with a sense of optimism, or with the hope that a better life is waiting. But even if this appears to be true on paper, you’re still leaving everyone and everything you know behind. You are going to lose friends, and you’re going to have to start a new job, or worse, try to find one. And chances are, you’re going spend a significant amount of money. Moving is expensive, as is leasing a new apartment and maybe a car.

There are also all the little ways your previous home spoiled you. You probably weren’t even aware of them until after you moved away. You miss being able to walk across the street to buy anything at any time, or being able to take the subway instead of having to own a car.

And when you meet the people in your new neighborhood, they just aren’t the same. They don’t seem quite genuine, or aware of the world outside of their town.

The solution here, for me, was to move back. As much as I hate New York City, I am no longer capable of living anywhere else. I’ve tried to move to places where the cost of living is lower, but so are the wages, and in most of these places, you need a car, so financially, it’s basically a wash.

Living in New York City is brutal, but it’s also convenient and vibrant. People come here because they have dreams, and you can feel that energy and desperation. The city is built atop countless crushed dreams.

It’s noisy and dirty and frantic and exhausting, but once you’ve lived here for long enough, nowhere else will do.

Unemployment

This becomes more terrifying as you grow older. You have too much experience to start at the bottom, or to be seriously considered in any field aside from your previous one, and again, you’re old now. Why hire you when they can hire a few kids for half the cost?

As this condition persists, you become more isolated and ashamed, and in practical terms, you better find something while you still have an apartment. No one wants to move back in with their parents at 40.

I eventually took a job delivering packages for Amazon. It paid minimum wage and was physically grueling, and we were limited to under 30 hours a week so we couldn’t accrue any benefits. No paid sick days, no affordable healthcare, no nothing. I had to go on food stamps, and I was still losing money, but at least there was a little bit of money coming in.

Luckily, I ended up working for the same corporation I had been with three years earlier. It wasn’t ideal — in a way, I felt trapped, or like my life was on a loop. But I had found a way to feed and house myself before the Amazon job had crippled and bankrupted me.

Sometimes, you have to take whatever you can get, and hang on for dear life until you find something better.

Divorce/Breakups

This is similar to the loss of a loved one, and the uncertainty here is what the hell you’re going to do next, or if you should even do anything at all.

People don’t get married or enter into serious relationships with the expectation that they’ll fail. On the contrary, we feel confident that we’ve finally found the right person. So when it falls apart, we’re not only lonely and broken, but completely unsure of ourselves. How could we have been so wrong about someone we had loved so much?

Losing the person you love is like quitting drugs. You miss their taste and their touch and the smell of their hair, and you can’t stop thinking about them, or quite figure out exactly what went wrong.

You’re alone and depressed, and are no longer used to either. You miss the person in particular, and the sense of intimacy in general.

We’re all unique, and there’s no replacing anyone. I don’t believe that we ever completely get over anyone, but there are other people out there. And many of us just aren’t meant to be in relationships.

Concentrate on your friends, your hobbies, and yourself, and try to figure out what’s best for you. You’ll probably never be quite the same, but in time, you will feel better.

Major Injury or Illness

You’ve been working hard as a waiter for over two years, and have paid off almost all of your debts. You’re about a month away from finally being in the black, then you take a bad step and dislocate your ankle. You won’t be able to walk, let alone work, for at least six months, and the surgery to fix your foot is going to cost $10,000.

While recovering, you have to rely solely on credit cards. All that debt you had paid off is suddenly back and then some, and your foot will never be quite the same.

To heal, you have to stay in bed and keep your injured foot elevated. In order to take showers, you have to duct tape a plastic bag around it. You can’t get it wet, you can’t put weight on it, and ideally, you shouldn’t even get out of bed.

In the beginning, friends and family stop by to say hello and bring food. But that gets old for everyone after about a month, so for the rest of the time, you’re alone in bed, watching TV or reading.

Fortunately, this isn’t a situation that’s permanent, but still, you’ve been hit hard. You’re unemployed and lonely and rapidly sinking into debt.

Depending on the severity of your injury or illness, you either have to accept it and change your life accordingly, or keep on reminding yourself that eventually, you are going to recover.

If you were a good employee, you’ll probably be able to get your job back. The pity card can go a long way, and don’t be ashamed to use it. The fact of the matter is that in this situation, you need all the help you can get, and if there’s ever a fair time to lay a guilt trip on anyone, this is it.

Final Thoughts

You’ll probably have to face all of these disasters or challenges at least once in your life, and as bad as they are, each also presents an opportunity to learn and grow.

Most of us have some sort of safety net in the form of friends and family. If you need help, ask for it.

There are also other resources out there. If you need counseling, make the call. If you need to apply for food stamps, do it.

As encouraging as I want to be, if you’re in real trouble, you’re on a deadline.

If homelessness is a looming possibility, take all the help that you can to prevent that from happening. Once you become homeless, it’s almost impossible to recover. Even if you manage to find a job and a home, that period of homelessness will haunt you for the rest of your life.

When you’re in the middle of a crisis, it seems like it’s forever. You drag yourself out of bed feeling like you weigh 1000 pounds, like you’ll never be able to work or love or function again. But almost all of us deal with these events, and almost all of us survive.

It’s easy, especially now, to sink into depression or self-pity, so it’s important to look around and remember to be grateful. If you’re healthy and have a roof over your head, you’re doing okay. And if you’ve lived through these events, or are living through them now, the odds are, you are going to make it through.