Completely and totally destroyed my life in 2009 and can't live with myself

I know this is long and am very thankful to anybody who reads it.

Long story short, I grew up in a household with extremely strict and controlling parents. I was a straight-A student, got a full scholarship to college, and graduated with a bachelors degree in IT in fall 2007, all while living with my parents. I landed a very respectable and well-paying job directly out of college. I had it made and my future was bright. The downside, I never had much of a social life due to my parents' strict rules.

After college, I moved out of my parents' house to a city about two hours away, and while I was doing extremely well for somebody my age in my career, I felt an emptiness because of my lack of social skills and the fact I didn't get to experience many of the things most other young people did in their teens and early twenties. I was laid off in November 2008 due to the economy but was extremely fortunate to quickly land an even better job, and it was a government job so that meant security even during recession. My loneliness and lack of social life however was continuing to eat at me.

The summer of 2009 came around, and I decided I was, for the first time in my life, going to have a little bit of fun that summer. What ended up happening is I tried desperately to make up for everything I thought I missed in high school and college. I got involved with a bad crowd, and ended up abusing alcohol and drugs, and leading a life of sexual promiscuity. I would stay out at the bars until 5am and then show up at work at 8am, several nights in a row. I lost all control of my life.

After a couple of months of this, I found myself fired from my government job. My parents had disowned me and my life was completely destroyed. To make matters worse, within a week of getting fired I decided to move halfway across the country to live with somebody I met on the Internet (stupid mistake). I moved, got a dead-end job, and ended up hitting rock bottom around the spring of 2010. My friend I ended up living with was very emotionally abusive and destroyed every ounce of self-esteem I had left.

It was from there I decided to clean my life up, and have been drug free since Memorial Day 2010. I moved out and got my own place later that summer. Things improved somewhat.

However, my entire life and thoughts are consumed with regrets for the way I took everything I spent my entire life working for and flushed it all completely down the toilet just for a couple of months of fun. I am still working my dead-end job which I hate, with little prospect of a career. My job is a customer service job which basically consists of me being screamed at and cursed at for 8 hours per day which is causing me to lose my mental sanity. I have been blacking out at times due to the stress and have cut myself a few times.

I still live every day with the damage that was done. I am constantly depressed to the point where the only thing keeping me alive is my faith in God, because all I can think about is what my life would have been had I not made the bad decisions I made. Every day, the day I was fired from my last job continuously replays in my head. I have tried to find a better job, preferably one in my career field and have found it impossible. I have had multiple interviews and it goes well until the interviewer always pops a question about my termination and my abrupt move to the city where I currently live. Its then I lose all confidence and the interview goes down hill.

I have thought about moving back to my hometown but its a small, retirement town and there is not much opportunity. Other than being close to family, there is nothing for me there.

The one thing I know for sure that continuing this pity party is not the answer, but I can't seem to get over it on my own. I just can't accept what I did and the fact I'll have to live with the consequences the rest of my life. I wish I could just go back in time and change it. I would give my right arm to go back in time to this date three years ago and relive my life and not make the same mistakes.

Anybody out there have any insight they could give? I can't continue to live like this and I am tired of wasting more of my life feeling sorry for myself, but I still feel so hopeless because everything I worked for is gone! Its getting hard for me to find hope anywhere.

Why does a new interview always go bad?? If it's about your termination, why not just tell them the truth?? That's ALWAYS the best answer!! Just tell them you got involved in a bad crowd, you got involved in drugs, and were fired! Tell them you totally cleaned up your act on Memorial Day 2010 and have been living a clean/sober life ever since. Stress that you have NO interest in ever going back to that awful life again! I see no reason why you shouldn't be given a second chance. Honesty is always the answer.

You sound like a very strong person -- I applaud you for getting clean/sober on your own. That's hard to do. I had to have help -- I went to AA cause I could NOT do it on my own.

You're still young and have a good life ahead of you. Forgive yourself!! You made some mistakes and God has forgiven you! Why can't YOU forgive yourself??? It's done and over and you're trying to repair things. Keep trying. You'll make it. God bless & take care. Hugs, Lee

Hi. I don't have ground breaking advise for you, but I can relate to some of it. It sounds like you are still young and that count in you favor. There is still hope of living a life what you want to. It is about taking charge of it. Yes, you made mistakes. Yes, you got fired. Learn from it. Don't wake up one day and see : "S***, I'm 41 yrs old, unemployed and living with my mother." That is tragically true for me!! And most of it is because I messed up. Life is so short. I wish I can have mine over from the very beginning. I feel it is to late for me, but not you. You sound like a very smart, talented person. You WILL find something. Try to focus on the positives. Most of the time all situations have more positives than negatives. When depressed we just tend to focus more on the negatives.
Good luck!

I can relate 110% to a T! You just described my life last 7 years.

Hello & Welcome, Bchris02!

Wow.

You mention strict, controlling parents who have disowned you. Your story reads like some accounts of young people reared in high-control groups who, as soon as they got out from under the umbrella of the group's influence, could not handle the freedom for which they were never prepared. They crashed and had to rebuild themselves -- their lives and identities. And -- so I read -- many of them are doing just fine after going through transition and transformation.

Please, make yourself at home here!

Unfortunately, in this continued economic recession there is little room for second chances. Saying I've been fired in an interview is an immediate way to disqualify myself. In a normal economy that wouldn't be so but today, there are so many unemployed people with my same skill set or better that they can easily find somebody with a solid work history.

I cannot forgive myself, no matter how hard I try, because every day I still have to live with the long term consequences of what I did. I may never completely recover from it.

i understand your feelings. when i stayed in the past i was not able to get to the future. we all have done things we regret terribly. but we can't change the past but what we can do tho is learn from it.
your job frustration is i'm sure very discouraging. it can cause you to feel "less than". but you are not! when i'm feeling down i try to take the focus off me and help someone else. it turns me around and my perception about self improves. don't know why but for me it works. this thinking may help you in your job search.
imho, if we feel we are a loser it's a self fufilling prohecy. that may affect how the interviewer sees you and limit possibilities. instead write down a list of how others perceive you. like loyal, trustworthy, a good friend...read it before an interview. read it everytime you beat yourself up. being honest with yourself re what others see in you will turn the negative into a positive. it's hard to acknowledge what others see in you as worthwhile so you may have a short list at first. when i did this all i wrote at the beginning was my dog loved me!!!hope this helps.

What Lee said