Dear Fuck Up: How Do I Start Over After Nearly Dying?

I can't seem to shake a fear of trying to rebuild

Dear Fuck Up,

A couple years ago, a big calamity happened to me. I almost died. Recovery took a long time. It basically fucked up every part of my life except my relationships. Now I'm at the point where I can probably start trying to move forward with my life and I'm finding it really hard to do.

On a personal level, calamities aside, my life is pretty good. I'm in a happy relationship and I have a lot of supportive friends and family. And that's certainly what really matters in life and I'm very grateful. But on a professional level, I am really struggling to get myself to work on getting back out there. I think I might even be scared to try? I hide from email and don't respond when people reach out to me with opportunities. I bookmark jobs that I think I'd be a good fit for, then I never apply to them. There's an obvious next step for me to take, career-wise, but every time I try to sit down and work it out I just want to run away.

And I love what I do! When I'm actually doing it, I'm incredibly happy. But I feel like if I let myself take a real step forward I'm just going to fall through the floor and keep falling forever. How do I stop being scared of trying?

Sincerely,

Falling Down The Rabbit Hole

Dear Falling Down The Rabbit Hole,

I often find myself thinking that people who nearly died are full of shit. I don’t mean you, Rabbit Hole, I mean the ones you read about from time to time or see on the news: someone whose small plane almost crashed or who escaped a shark attack relatively unscathed. After recounting whatever harrowing experience led them to confront their own mortality, they invariably end up talking about seeing life in a whole new way — how this narrow escape made them realize what’s really important, or how blessed they feel to get a second chance, and how they intend to make the most of it. I always think to myself, “Come on, you aren’t even a little bit pissed you had to go through this at all?” I would be. News producers would have to cut my segment because it would just be me in a hospital bed saying, “Well, Jim, I think the real lesson here was that almost dying is fucking terrible and pointless.” 

I would especially chafe under the suggestion that the experience should be improving. I am already aware of what’s really important. A second chance at life sounds okay, I guess, but not when it probably comes saddled with a bunch of medical debt. And as far as making the most of it goes? Nonsense. If anything, we should allow people who nearly died to do less with the rest of their time here.

You don’t sound particularly angry, though, which is likely a sign you’re already bearing this calamity better than I would. I’m no good at nobly bearing things. In fact, I find your current predicament — the fear of starting over professionally — uncomfortably relatable. Uncomfortable because I didn’t even almost die! I just lost my job and haven’t been able to find another one, and the longer this remains true the more desolating it feels. 

You said you feel like running away. Personally, I am inclined to make myself very small — make my world the size of my neighborhood, my apartment, my bed, my phone  — and remain very still. So small and so still that whatever force crashed into my previous life, be it bad luck or karma or a god I don’t even believe in, cannot notice me again. Catastrophe has a way of turning us into prey animals. 

It’s one thing to know on an intellectual level that every person is vulnerable to some form of capricious devastation — it’s quite another to come through the other side of that experience, as you have. Of course you’re scared. One fear may be that you’ve somehow missed the window on your own professional future, that you will try and fail and eventually realize your recovery amounted to so much wasted possibility. At the risk of sounding glib, this one is silly. It’s only been a couple of years, and unless you’re a professional athlete that is not an insurmountable setback.

A bigger one may be that you’ll succeed — you’ll get right back on track, throw yourself wholly into doing this work you love and build a life that brings you immense satisfaction, and it could all be taken away again. 

This one’s a very reasonable thing to fear. But it’s also, I think, precisely why you move forward anyways. Because the point of life is to put as much of ourselves as we can into things we cherish, into the very things we are terrified to lose. For a lot of people that’s not work, but you’re lucky enough to have found something to do that makes you happy. So do it! Be happy! Yes, you have been brought low by circumstances beyond your control but you are merely near the ground, not yet in it. Replace your fear of trying with the fear of looking back on your life from some distant point and realizing you never did any work you really cared about. Fear realizing that you let nearly dying stop you from living. 

Love,

A Fuck Up

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