"grim existence" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It can be used to describe a difficult, harsh, or unpleasant way of living. Example: The villagers in the war-torn country struggled to survive, their lives overshadowed by a constant sense of danger and a grim existence.
It is from these refugees that a picture of the grim existence of North Koreans emerges.
What the people see must be the opposite of this grim existence.
They live a grim existence — a routine of trying to eat, to stay warm and dry, to gather firewood and water out in the elements, all while listening for the sounds of incoming planes and artillery shells.
Silly as they were, they were happy fantasies, what he wished his own youth had been like, instead of what it was: a grim existence with an alcoholic and abusive mother after his parents' divorce.
"What is it that I'm looking at?', that proclaims to be a suitable distraction to this grim existence, the dud-work, the 70s wallpapering bench with crap aluminium legs.
That Walt is living out his grim existence in the combatively sunny Southwest is just another cruel joke, the chief one being that he is suffering from lung cancer — Stage 3A — even though he doesn't smoke.
In 1909, Stein published the book that first won her literary renown: "Three Lives", a trio of stories about the grim existences of 3 poor women in a small American city.
Arguing that "granting fast food workers anything beyond a grim, scraping existence would put a serious dent in our profits," the Fast Food Restaurant Council spokesman Tracy Klugian said.
As the years have passed, his youth deserted him and the grim reality of existence set in, Carney has done away with the sign of the horn celebration.
More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return.
Although its storytelling includes a number of small glitches, the movie does an almost dismayingly good job of conveying its characters' grim, bare-bones existence and the stultifying sexual and religious taboos that the lovers flout.
