Have you ever reached a point where you said "I can't keep living like this;" what did you do about it?

I could barely walk due to MS.
It wasn’t a final straw.I just needed to look into options to improve things….so I did.
I took large amounts of supplements,along with a few dietary changes which helped a great deal.Within 3 days to be exact.I was back to doing 4 miles.Still alittle wobbly but walking…I wanted more improvement,so I looked into a surgical procedure for a few months and decided to go have it done.
Best decision ever.I’ll be running by summer.;)
If it is impossible to control or escape from something,then it is best to accept it and not bitch about it

GA lucille. It’s so good to hear that your sugery has had such a great outcome and that taking that initiative to improve your quality of life is going to pay off.
I like too what you said about accepting it.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how odd it is when people tell others who have been through something difficult that “you’re so strong for getting through this” etc. I just wonder, what other option does someone have BUT to get through it? Is this person basically saying “you’re so strong for not committing suicide?”
I think real strength is displayed when someone can not just muddle through something difficult but accept it without bitching constantly.

”Is this person basically saying ‘you’re so strong for not committing suicide?’”
.
Yes, sometimes. I’ve actually had people say “I’d just kill myself.” It’s… unsettling.

@Mariah Thank you! ;)

It was my first marriage. It was mostly toxic after about 18 months into it and I convinced myself “I can’t keep living like this” because it wasn’t good for my health or my sanity. It was a culmination of problems in the relationship that continually worsened. Counseling wasn’t an option because I knew it wouldn’t make a difference. The important change I made was to separate from her and immediately get to work on filing the divorce.

If there is a problem you can’t control or escape from, I’d recommend talking to friends, get counseling, seek help from whatever avenues are open to you.

Got divorced

I stopped accepting blame for other peoples problems…very liberating to do so.

I woke up in the middle of the night on a vacation and realized I had to get out of a toxic job in a family business. When i got back, I gave two months notice. I left on a Friday and on the following Monday, happened on to a dream part time job back in my original profession.

Yep.

I was tired of working my ass off with very little in the way of either financial compensation or real chance of sustainable success.

The final straw was when I was working by day as a window washer and by night as a musician. I was standing on top of this building undoing a paripit clamp when I looked down below and had an ephiphany. It went something like this: THIS SUCKS!!!

So… I went back to school, finished my degree in computer science, and proceeded to fulfill my reluctant destiny as an uber geek.

Bottom line: Your life is up to you. Take charge of it. Sure, you might have challenges, but then again, so does everyone else. Welcome to the human condition.

Yes
I made a change

I was in a bad relationship with a nasty douchebag. I was sick of being taken for granted and feeling degraded. I had already been thinking about ending it, but then he made a truly disgusting comment one night and that was the last straw. My whiskey glass flew at his head, my legs flew me to his bedroom to get my few “leave over” items, my middle finger was stuck in the air as I stalked past him, then I hopped in my car and peeled out of his driveway.

Cleaned my room.

@lucillelucillelucille

You GO, girl! I have found much the same thing to be true. We will NEVER give up! : D

I went rhough this sort of thing after my ex-wife cut me off from any sort of affection at all, not even hugs, because I no longer made “enough” money. I held on for three years, mostly because I truly believed that I would marry once and that would be it. But at the end of three years of zero affection, I decided that I could no longer live like that.

My husband lost his job, became a taxi driver, brought his mates home for a few drinks at 2 am, which became some hash smoking. 3 children had to go to school in the am. The hash smoking did it. Now, I think we should have worked through it but I didn’t have the desire to be with him at all.

Yes. I had a 7yr too long relationship with a man who smoked weed practically around the clock, growing more and more depressed each year, drinking more each year and getting more paranoid each year. The straw that broke this camel’s back is when the man who had detested gambling all his life became a gambling addict and cost us our homes, cars and security.

For years I had a moody, controlling boyfriend who went in for emotional blackmail. One day in a fit of rage he picked up the first oil painting I had ever purchased—it cost me the rent money—and smashed it over his knee. I knew it was a stand-in for me. That was it; it was only a matter of time, but we were through. A few months later I started a new life a continent away.

After 8 years with one company, my new manager gave me a ho-hum annual review, the first time I’d ever received less than top marks, and rated me at 3 out of 5 for two of my best strengths. She said, “I know you’re a 5, but I can’t give out so many because our overall profile has to fit the bell curve.” I started looking right away and resigned a few months later. She offered to go back and change my ratings when I told her the reason, but it was just the last straw and much too late for her to do anything. I started my new job at $20k more.

I was living in Ubatuba, Sao Paulo, a small surf town on the south eastern coast of Brazil. I am a 19 year old American forced to come to Brazil, as it was hard to live alone in Miami, and my parents were absolutely tired of the USA. So i came with them, studied my ass off to try to go to a specific college, but I didn’t pass their admissions test. I stayed one year doing nothing (but surfing) in a small town. I couldn’t stand the feeling of not growing in life, of wasting time.

So in a span of three days, I decided to move to Sao Paulo, the third largest Metropolis in the world. I packed my bags and didn’t think twice about living on my own. Arriving in Sao Paulo, i used a bit of money to find a place, but I slept in a hotel for the first day. Second day, i left my stuff at my new rented room and went to a college to take their admissions test that same day. Third day I was told I passed. Fourth day I was officially a student at the college and attending. I’m at my fourth week in Sao Paulo now, but I definitely need a job as my money is nearly gone.

I’ve been to a few interviews, two in the past two days. Hopefully, if God will, one of them will be mine.

Yep. I know I’ve told the story before, but here it goes again. I was a dirt poor musician working by day as a window washer for a fly by night window washing company owned by a friend (which meant our health plan pretty much consisted of a consolation six pack if we were injured on the job). I was sharing a house (affectionately known as the commune) with way to many people including the members of the band and the guys who owned the window washing company.

One day while standing on top of a high rise building downtown removing a parapet clamp I looked down, got a collective case of the willies that had apparently been building up for a few years, and came to the inescapable conclusion that THIS SUCKED!!!!. So… I went back to school to fulfill my reluctant destiny as a software engineer. I graduated 2 years later with a 4.0 GPA in my major and promptly got my first “real” job doing kernel maintenance on a Unix variant that was in use at the time.

Now it’s 20 years later. Sure I bitch about voluntarily “doing time” in my fabric coated “cell”. But then I remind myself I could still be dangling from a rope in the blazing sun several stories above a busy and very hard street and playing the snot out of a guitar every evening for a group of folks in a bar that really don’t give a crap and everything seems a bit more bearable (of course, I probably would have been dead of conspicuous consumption long before now had I continued down the road I choose to abandon).