What’s a difficult thing you had to overcome in your life?

highrider

highrider

Banned
When I was 16 I was 6'1 and 220 pounds. Had good speed and natural strength. I was playing JV football and wrestling and got a lot of my sense of self and validation from being an athlete.

Myself along with several other teammates got mononucleosis. They think it came from a garden hose they had punched holes in for our water breaks at practice. My father was a self employed attorney, we had no health insurance and the lymph nodes in my throat got infected like a strep throat on top of the mono, eventually went to the ER and got treated. I was bed ridden for a month and a half. For the first month I could barely hold down Gatorade and broth. After I recovered I had lost 50 pounds. Quite a bit of muscle mass. I went from being a burly athlete to an anemic looking dude in a very short time,

Within the next year I put on some weight but I was never the same. It forced me to kind of explore myself pretty early in life. Like I felt certain I was going to be an athlete from a young age. I had to figure out who I was. As the years went by and I trained and got stronger again, it wasn't until I was almost 35 where I was as strong as I was naturally before I got sick. My dad and older brother are both 6'5 and I never grew another inch after I was 16. So yes, mine is story of a young Chad, stricken down in his prime 😢😂
 
Being smart and compassionate really holds you back.
I also tried to overcome my privileges of being white and rich, but no matter how hard I tried, I wasn't able to shed these stains.

What got me through these tough times was my limitless hatred for my peers.
Every glance at their white affluent faces reinforced a deep animalistic drive in me not to end up like them.



My therapist recommended beating up FDP voters as a past-time. Which I tried to stick to, but from time to time I just gotta have some JU bitches.
The revitalizing feeling only ever lasts a few days, though, so its a continuous struggle.
 
Not being on the high school basketball team and getting an offer else where is something I think about overcoming an obstacle in life.
 
I was a cyclist 3 years ago and I fucked up my pelvis/lowerback over doing it and now have chronic pelvic and lower back pain and can't do anything physically without flaring up aside from running. I can't sit on anything too soft and I bought a sim racing set up and found out I can't even do that with our flaring the shit out of my lower back. And now my knee is constantly sore as I had a meniscectomy 12 years ago and it is getting arthritis bad. Can't even go for a damn walk now with out being in pain after. Haven't really overcome it.
 
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obesity.
i was 125 kg before starting diet and bodybuilding many many years ago.
lucky for me i was tall so not the classic ball of lard but still very fat.

also living with my parents that basically hate each other since the beginning.
 
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Not sure which one but the only things I'd consider difficult were these.

Growing up with my parents till I was old enough to leave. Luckily my grandmother took me when I was like 13.

Finishing ranger school.

Nursing school.

And not letting myself go insane years ago dealing with the shit I had to for almost a year till doctors figured out I had hairy cell leukemia.

Aside from those things nothing has been too difficult. Just shit that has to be dealt witb.
 
Right lazy eye fukks up ur vision I can't see 3D movies or read with it and it makes u suck at sports that need legit depth perception. Seems like a disability to me I maybe could've been a contender at some sport. Probably built some character tho which may have been a positive.
 
Endomorph, small d, gynecomasty, loss of hair, overly sweaty, tall and goofy, pronunciation dificulties, respiratory problems from young age (gone now), what else...

About overcoming, I finished Dark Souls, does that count?
 
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I'm 5' 10" @ 210lb right now. Still obese on a chart

I've been 280lb a few times in my life and worked it off only to get it back

Ain't goin' back to that shit now. It would kill me
 
Losing my mom, my father in law and my wife's grandma in a span of months during my wife's pregnancy of our first child in 2014.

My business going bankrupt in the end of 2015.

Losing our second child in 2016.

The 2010's were grim as fuck to me.
 
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Getting through college was difficult for me. Getting a computer science degree meant taking lots of hard math classes, physics classes, automata theory, etc... and now that I've graduated I don't even need to know all that. There were many days where I would go to school early in the morning and get home late at night... tons of homework plus attending office hours when I could, not to mention all the reading, attending classes, and making the drive back and forth. Then finally paying off the debt after graduating.

I've also been going through a difficult time recently with things getting tough at work after joining a new team while simultaneously going through the process of buying my first house... for months it seriously felt like having two full time jobs at once but it should be over soon as my closing date is coming up later this month.
 
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I came from a dirt poor farming family and was raised with the full expectation of continuing that. School was always optional and it was assumed i would drop out like most of my cousins. The only reason i made it all the way through was because of baseball and again the only reason I got the opportunity to go to college was because of an athletic scholarship. If it wasn't for sports i would be living in a trailer in the hills of Kentucky without two pennies to rub together like most of my family.
 
Being poor and no matter how frugal and imaginative you were you still earned minus money at the end of the month. So for example despite sleeping in my car outside the office a couple of times a week to save petrol money. I was still minus. Realizing I should have brought an old van instead of an old car to get to work as it would have made a better stealth camper.

Eventually got a promotion and pay rise without having too much debt.
 
Homosexuality. Was surrounded by hostility or potential consequences in various forms for most of my life. I spent my teens and twenties in loneliness, hiding that part of me and trying to pretend it wasn't a thing, wishing for it to go away. It's nice to be able to talk about it these days without fear of losing my career.
 
Celcius said:
Getting through college was difficult for me. Getting a computer science degree meant taking lots of hard math classes, physics classes, automata theory, etc... and now that I've graduated I don't even need to know all that. There were many days where I would go to school early in the morning and get home late at night... tons of homework plus attending office hours when I could, not to mention all the reading, attending classes, and making the drive back and forth. Then finally paying off the debt after graduating.

I've also been going through a difficult time recently with things getting tough at work after joining a new team while simultaneously going through the process of buying my first house... for months it seriously felt like having two full time jobs at once but it should be over soon as my closing date is coming up later this month.
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I can really sympathize with you. That BS degree is commonly offered with a very heavy emphasis on the academics of computer science and is not a degree in software development or anything remotely like that. It sounds like we had basically the same curriculum complete with math department geared towards math educators (math minor), basically the complete physics series (physics minor), and then all the upper-level CS courses. I basically made my the math department my second home in order to survive that lunacy.
 
Two of the hardest things for me to overcome have been leaving behind the place I knew as home and the loss of my mom. The even harder thing to accept is that even if I went back to that place I called home, it will never be what it was and it will never be complete again without my mom. There's just no going back.

Good thing I'm not disappointed with the present, though. There's just never going back.
 
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I basically lost my identity 4 years ago. Being stupid and young I had my social security card in my wallet, and then lost my damn wallet.

It took me a year and a lot of jumping through hoops to get a new birth certificate, social security card, and ID. It stopped me from taking my Driver's exam and my permit expired, just got back on track toward that this past year.

Next hurdle is my driving exam (which I paid for already), then I've conquered my fear if driving completely after seeing my mom get hit by a car when I was 5
 
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Going anywhere in public is a difficult thing for me. I developed severe social anxiety/agoraphobia at a very young age.
Honestly, I don't think I'll ever overcome it. Every time I manage to leave the house, I consider it a battle won.

Losing my mom last year didn't help. We were very close, and very much alike. Talking to each other about our struggles with anxiety was incredibly therapeutic for both of us.
 
A softball sized tumor in my left chest discovered at twenty. Went through chemo up until my mid thirties (on and off) to shrink it. My entire youth aside my childhood and teenage years was spent fighting it. From the pain as of late, I believe it's growing yet again (this will be a third recurrence), and if it is, I think I'm about done. I've no interest to undergo chemo yet again. I'm currently in the stage of weighing my options.

I'm Bipolar II as well which is no cakewalk either. Physically and mentally ill....this is not something I enjoy and at 42 I've come to the point of my life of asking myself why should I fight to keep it?
 
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From age 17 and a half to age 21 I was looking for a diagnosis and trying to figure out what was keeping me down so hardcore: I was constantly injured and I was so weak at one point, that I couldn't bicep curl a soup can without pain in arms. I had atrophied to thats point, such a point, that if I tried to do a pushup on my knees, I would surely damage the tendon it felt like. Well, it was an extremely deep hole. One day, after college courses, I had accidentally fucked up my rhomboids accidentally. I had already been dealing with a groin strain, a hamstring strain, fucked up elbows that needed icing every day, and I think maybe even a lower back issue but when I lay in my bed that day, icing like two spots at that moment, literally laying perfectly still because I was that fucked up on that day. It was the most weight on my shoulders I think I've ever felt. It was like physical hell, where I was just in deep sorrow. I was always so optimistic. And I never gave up hope of getting better, my dream was to get out of that pitiful state, get stronger, and play basketball again (hadn't played in 3 years due to pain). But I just remember feeling on that day, that maybe I wasn't going to get better...It had been three years of seemingly all out effort and hundreds and hundreds of injuries, and repeating the healing process, and strengthening, and repeat the vicious cycle over again. For three years with constant hope and determination to find the truth and be an active athlete again, that was my dream ever since I was stripped of my health by unknown circumstances

Well, eventually my luck got better, and I found an excellent Orthopedic doctor, who sent me to a top doctor in the area, and it turned out that I had an autoimmune disease all this time and didn't even know. Didn't even know what I was up against. And still really don't since the disease is so rare and there isn't much scientific study behind it at all. But through my constant effort and search for truth, and my thousands of agonizing failures that I found what suits me for a better life. And if I stick to it strictly, I can be active and live alright for the lost part, very little chance of an attack

It was a hell of a five year struggle, and I thank God for equipping me with what it took to find a way out of all that. One day, I ought to write a book to try and help out others who might be going through similar trials. Or at least, a helpful article that will reach out to people in need of answers
 
* death of my mother by cancer when I was 21. I solely took care of her the year before she died.
* being chronically ill myself by the age of 25 for two years. Had mono and chronic fatigue syndrome afterwards.
* split up from the mother of my second son last year when she started being pregnant, due to her psychological problems.
 
About 5 years ago I poured my heart into a new job I had that was what I thought was a dream job. Boss seemed like a great mentor with a massive amount of knowledge who could help me grow, I took a lateral move and slight pay cut in order to have the opportunity to work for them.

Had to show up at a new location for work in the middle of nowhere and my GPS stopped working, I couldn't even pull the directions back up. I was completely lost, tried asking for directions and was directed even farther off course. Ended up finding the place an hour late.

My boss fired me as soon as they saw me, basically said they couldn't have someone work for them that they couldn't trust. I sent an email asking for another chance, and if not potential advice on what else I could have done better. Also called and left a message. I never received a response.

This also occurred less than a month after a girl I thought was "the one" dumped me as I was preparing a big romantic night for our anniversary. Jobless, alone, and struggling to pay bills, I fell into a deep depression that took well over a year to get completely out of. Lot of times I felt like ending myself. Took me a while to realize my boss was a piece of shit and didn't deserve a lick of respect. The girl I took a lot longer to completely get over, but her breaking up with me wasn't as devastating as losing that job.
 
MaestroMike said:
Right lazy eye fukks up ur vision I can't see 3D movies or read with it and it makes u suck at sports that need legit depth perception. Seems like a disability to me I maybe could've been a contender at some sport. Probably built some character tho which may have been a positive.
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my father has the same problem.
 
My worst sickness was also mononucleosis, though I got it like almost everyone who gets it got it: Kissing. I was at 40° fever for quite a few weeks and could hardly eat or drink. I only lost ~10kgs, but I started at 60kgs, so it was a lot. It took me almost half a year to get back into pre-mononucleosis shape. What really sucked about the sickness was (in addition) that most of my time with the sickness I could not even play videogames because I was too tired to use a controller....

EDIT: It was not the hardest thing in my life though, I would say that's the very early birth of my son (3 months early) and the constant worries and daily routine of going to the hospital after work.
 
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SurprisedPikachu said:
You're still pretty phat tho
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That's just my penis.

GymWolf said:
quitting cigs was a joke compared to getting in shape, i literally stopped smoking from a day to another without much problems at all.
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Yeah same. I quit cold turkey, picked up smokes a few times for weekend drinking or some such, and then quit entirely a few months later.

A big problem is it's easy to know what habits need to die to quit smoking. As G.I. Joe explains, knowing is half the battle and I didn't know which habits were contributing most to my fatness. It wasn't my lack of exercise, for instance, but my awful diet and my poor heart/lung conditioning (I'm sure the cigs contributed to that).
 
DunDunDunpachi said:
That's just my penis.


Yeah same. I quit cold turkey, picked up smokes a few times for weekend drinking or some such, and then quit entirely a few months later.

A big problem is it's easy to know what habits need to die to quit smoking. As G.I. Joe explains, knowing is half the battle and I didn't know which habits were contributing most to my fatness. It wasn't my lack of exercise, for instance, but my awful diet and my poor heart/lung conditioning (I'm sure the cigs contributed to that).
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lucky for me i quit smoking cigs when my lungs were still able to sustain heavy training.

but stop eating delicious stuff or even start to exercise was hell, even more with my shitty genetic.
for a long period i literally forget how pasta and bread tasted...thank god i love meat so an hyper-proteic low-caloric diet was not impossible to follow after some adjustements.

one of my secrets? eating a shitload of raw fennel, basically calories free and you tire your jaw and full your stomach with that, and it doens't taste like absolute shit like many healty food (at least for me) what an underrated vegetable.
 
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GymWolf said:
lucky for me i quit smoking cigs when my lungs were still able to sustain heavy training.
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I'm blessed to be able to say that my lungs and heart are stronger than they've ever been, but that is only due to training/conditioning every day focused on those organs.

GymWolf said:
but stop eating delicious stuff or even start to exercise was hell, even more with my shitty genetic.
for a long period i literally forget how pasta and bread tasted...thank god i love meat so an hyper-proteic low-caloric diet was not impossible to follow after some adjustements.
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Yeah carbs are my enemy, though I do indulge from time to time. High fat and high protein for me now. Fasting and OMAD are the only methods that ended up working for me. No amount of exercise nor diet-tweaking was enough to put me in a calorie deficit while also eating 3 meals per day.
 
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