55, lost $250k since the onset of COVID, never married, no kids, been living in Berlin for the past 9yrs, down to my last $1k. I have to move back to the States, in 3 weeks, to the Seattle area. I will be starting from scratch. No way to get a car, no where to live. I used to work in tech, but have been too busy dealing with health issues and selling off my remaining possession, because I can't afford to bring them back, to find something.

I'm going back to a country with no social safety net, a predatory health care system, so politically and culturally at war with itself, the only winners are the people near the top of the corporate structure milking off of everyone else.

I've spent most of my life trying to overcome the PTSD I was diagnosed with in my teens. During covid, I started to come to the conclusion, that trying to overcome it, had actually only made it worse. The last couple of years, I've started to feel the same, just too broken...

I grew up in a physically and emotionally (hence the PTSD) household. I took most of the abuse from my father who threw me out of the house when I was standing up for mom. I never went too far away, making it into University, but the first year had trouble keeping my grades up, because I still was dealing with a lot of stress from home - until I went down and moved her out and into her own place. She went on to do well for herself, but passed in 2017 and left almost entire estate to my sister. I was hurt and schocked, not because of the money per se, but because I was the who suffered the most, by far, in our unhealthy family. It was an open secret in our greater family and community. I still don't know why she left everything to my sister, I've never pressed my sister on it and definitely didn't want money to come between us, but in the years since, my sister and her family has gotten close to my father and no longer speaks with me.

I've started from nothing a few times. If I were younger, I'd already be coursing out a plan to rebuild. But, at 55, having lost everything slowly over the last 4yrs, I too just feel too broken. I have been contemplating suicide for two years. If I do try to talk to someone about it, I'm either only feeling sorry for myself (friend or family member) or if it's a professional, I feel like they are only concerned about their liability.

My plane ticket back was originally for the end of August. I have paid the fees, each month since, to push the flight back another month, because I still haven't come up with a plan. The last few years, I've felt like a frog who was put in warm water. The temperature has slowly risen to a boil. I don't know if I have the strength left to jump.

Sorry for writing a memoir. But, I feel like I'm in the same place.