[acjohnson55]

Your experience reminds me of how I felt after a situation that was more like chronic trauma, vs an acute near-death experience.

I did Teach For America it was by far the most difficult thing I've ever done. This definitely isn't true for everyone in the program, but I think my personality combined with the circumstances of my placement led to a very difficult experience for me.

Every single day, I got out of bed, tired, to go into another day of getting my ass kicked. Sunday was the worst day of my week because I had 5 days of trauma ahead of me. And honestly, I don't think "trauma" is an exaggeration of the experience of having 5 consecutive days of continuous stress overload every week for weeks on-end.

That was 14 years ago, and ever since I've felt like I'm walking on sunshine nearly every day since. Which is weird because I dealt with a lot of depression before my teaching experience.

However, I know a lot of people who experienced the opposite, with a lot of bad and lingering mental health challenges.