living hell
An extremely unpleasant situation. She described her marriage to her alcoholic husband as a living hell. So many bad things happened to me that year that it was a living hell.
a living hell
COMMON If a situation or a place is a living hell, it is extremely unpleasant. School is a living hell for some children. Their marriage had become a living hell.
living hell, a
A condition or place of acute misery and distress. This expression uses hell in the sense of the afterworld’s place of eternal torment. “Even after the divorce was final, he made her life a living hell.” Also put as hell on earth, it appears in such contexts as “Jungle warfare is a true hell on earth.”