Me, I Choose To Dwell In My Disappointments

A friend of mine is going through a difficult time. She's worked at a school for years and is approaching the end of her time there, and not by choice. Every spring, she's worried about whether or not they'll bring her back in the fall and this year the decision was made not to. And the bitch of it all is that there's absolutely no reason for them to let her go. She's been a devoted employee, done what she was asked, sacrificed her own time for the students and yet it still wasn't enough. Now that the end is just about here, it's hitting her rather hard. She's attempting to drink away the depression and just wants to sleep during the day. Fortunately, her mother is going her damnedest to keep her from wallowing. But even she can only do so much. I offer as much encouragement as I can but I doubt I'm of any help. And I feel like most of what I have to say would come off as preachy anyway. That's not my intention, it's just that I've been in the same kind of emotional state that she's in now. And I feel like, for once, I'm actually qualified to dish out advice. But I also know that people have to get through things at their own pace. And hopefully her pace is a lot faster than mine. I've been in the same uber-depressed, wanna crawl under a rock and die emotional state that she's in now. The difference is that she will mourn and move past it, whereas I chose to sulk in everything that went wrong in my life. And sulk. And, oh yeah, sulk some more. I lost actual years of my life because I didn't cope well with the things that didn't work out. Instead of turning to the people I had in my life to help me through, I sought to numb everything. And I mean, everything. It started with doubling up on a couple of prescriptions that I had gotten post-accident and then snowballed into taking more and more until I couldn't feel a damn thing. I tried a few, shall we say, illegal narcotics but they either made me incredibly jumpy or put me on a high, which heightened everything else. Which was the opposite of what I was looking for. An added bonus of the pills was that I figured out how to take just enough to not feel any kind of emotion, but not make anyone suspicious about what I was doing. I seemed normal enough, just very depressed. In reality, I was so doped up that I only heard about 20% of what anybody said to me. I wanted to do nothing but take shit, drink and lay around all day. And I did a lot of that. Eventually, I replaced the laying around all day with going out and getting laid. Because drugs, drinking and meaningless sex will fix everything, right? Of course not. But I didn't care. I didn't want to fix shit, just wanted it all to go away. I was like a living, breathing D.A.R.E. advertisement. But I did get past it, eventually. The effects could have been much worse, I could have died (but what else is new, really). And that whole time of my life sort of sticks with me. I get angry with myself about it. But there's nothing I can really do now but move on. Occasionally, when things get really bad, I have the tendency to turn towards that old crutch to numb myself. But my tolerance isn't what it used to be so it affects me a lot more and I'm completely unable to hide it. But I slip up every now and then, even when I try my damnedest not to. And all of that is why I feel like saying so much to her about how NOT to cope. But then I know she's not as stupid as I was. It just sucks when someone you care about gets screwed over for no reason whatsoever and there's not a thing you can do about it. But such is life I guess.