I hate my life: a bad period or a bad life? What the stories say

What "I hate my life" contains when people write it out

The sentence is short and the stories behind it are not. A reader who wrote hate my life listed a job, a flat, a relationship and a body they could not stand, in that order. Another who wrote i hate my life so much was describing one trip gone wrong that had somehow become the proof that everything was wrong. A student described how school was ruining their mental health. Another simply wrote I can't take it anymore.

Hatred of a whole life is almost never about the whole life. It is about two or three things that have become unbearable and have painted everything else their color.

What the replies do with it

The first thing the replies do, almost every time, is make a list. They ask the author to separate what they hate: the job, the town, the person, the body, the debt. Then they ask which of those would still be hated on a good day. The lists are shorter than the feeling. In several threads the author answers that, written down, it is really one thing plus exhaustion.

The second thing is to distinguish a bad period from a bad life. A bad period has a beginning: a loss, a move, a breakup, a diagnosis, a year of bad sleep. A life that has been hated for years, with no beginning the person can name, is a different conversation, and the replies in those threads are mostly about depression and about seeing someone.

What the authors did, according to their updates

A few authors came back months later. What they describe is modest.

• Changing the one thing that was really the problem, often the job or the flat, and discovering that the rest was bearable.
• Telling one person in real life, after having said it here first.
• Seeing a doctor, in the cases where the replies had been unanimous about it, and finding out that what they called their life was partly their sleep and their mood.
• Cutting contact with the person who made every day worse, which several family drama stories describe in detail.

When what you hate is one person

A large share of the stories under this title are, on reading, about one person: a parent, a partner, a boss. The reader who wrote I think I hate my family and the one who asked why do I hate my family? had both started by hating their whole life. The replies in those threads are about distance, boundaries and the age at which leaving becomes possible; the guides on running away and on being the black sheep of the family cover them in detail. When the person is a partner, the couple stories hold most of what the replies have to say, and the question usually turns into whether to stay.

If "I hate my life" has become "I don't want to live"

Some of the stories under this title cross that line, and the replies change tone when they do. If you are thinking about ending your life, this page is not the right help: call your local emergency number, or a crisis line such as 988 in the United States and Canada or 116 123 (Samaritans) in the United Kingdom. They answer at any hour and you do not have to give your name.

Writing yours

Write the list, not the sentence: what you hate, since when, and what a good day looks like if there are any. Leave out names, employers and places. You sign in with an existing account and only a generated pseudonym is shown; stories are reviewed before publication.

Questions and answers

Is this normal?

Hating your life for a while, after something broke, is one of the most common stories on the site. Hating it for years with no beginning you can name is a reason to see someone.

Will people just tell me to be grateful?

Rarely. Replies are reviewed and the useful ones ask questions rather than give lessons.

What if the problem is one person?

Say so. A large share of these stories are about a parent, a partner or a boss, and the replies for those are concrete.

Is it anonymous?

Yes. Your name and email are never stored; you appear under a pseudonym generated from your account.