Your life before bankruptcy and after bankruptcy will be very different--even if you had credit problems before. While a lot of marks on your report will look bad to professionals looking over your report, there is nothing like the reaction people will have when they see the word "bankruptcy".

This will stay on your report for many years, too, so there's not really any escaping it. This will come up for you when you go to get any kind of insurance, loans, rent anything (apartment, vehicle, etc) or even when you go to apply for a job. It is manageable, and there are things you can do to make living with it easier and help yourself adjust, but your life is definitely going to be different than it was.

Before bankruptcy you may have had credit problems, but they weren't likely to come up on job applications and you were probably still able to rent an apartment, sign up for a cell phone contract, and get credit cards (even if you had to pay high rates and deposits).

After bankruptcy these things will all be difficult, and more. This will come up for you constantly. When you go to apply for jobs they'll ask you right on the application about whether you've had a bankruptcy in your past, and a lot of higher paying jobs will perform credit checks. When you go apply for any kind of rental or contract for any kinds of utilities (television, cell phone, electric bill, etc) this is going to be a problem for you. You will have to pay high deposits on a lot of things, and have to fight to get service at all.

Don't let this get you down though, you have to just keep working through it and work on finding companies that will work with you, and work on saving up money for deposits (make sure they're refundable--they should be) and work on improving your credit. You can have decent credit in as little as two years after this, and by that time you will truly appreciate what that means.

Life after bankruptcy is going to be harder, but you can work through it, keep pushing to rebuild your credit history and working towards financial stability.