Thursday, December 14, 2017

On the edge—of something

So, there are times when we allow ourselves to look around and decide that what everyone else is going through is worse than what we are going through, and we therefore simply don’t have the right to ever feel sad, or alone. Many of us laugh off what we feel, and blame it all on “first world problems.”

Most of the time, it’s true—the problems upon which we expend the most emotional energy are situations someone else would gladly take on, in exchange for the many blessings that come along with those worries. I try to make it a habit to remember how lucky I am, and to recognize that even during hard times, I still have so much for which to be grateful and happy.

But sometimes, I think we can take the awareness that we are living a good life so far, that we struggle to ask for help when we actually need it, or even just to share the fact that we are struggling at all. We tend to let things build until we break, because we are constantly trying to convince ourselves that we should be able to cope—we should be able to take our lumps.

I know I have fallen into this habit a lot. I think my emotional aches and pains are trivial, and that I am weak if I allow them to take me down. As a result, I start to wall myself off and feel guilty for the fact I am struggling over something I define as ridiculous. The pain of admitting my weaknesses runs so deep, that I allow it to isolate me from people in my life who often would be happy to help. I tell myself that if I just harden up, and try to be stronger, I can deal with the struggle, or feeling of the moment.

But more often than I like, I just can’t.

I haven’t made it a secret that I had a less than fantastic childhood. It was rough. There truly were moments I thought I was going to die. There were moments I thought even worse things than that were going to happen. I’ve been told that I am really strong, because I survived those terrible years, and by many people’s standards, I am successful.

Sometimes, I laugh at the thought. I laugh at the idea that I am “strong,” because now, it seems like the least little thing can emotionally flatten or cripple me. It’s as if I used up my lifetime allotment of strength in the first twenty years of my life, and there wasn’t a drop left for anything else.

I guess if there were times I thought I might die, it might be reasonable that it took everything I could muster not to. But it does seem unfair—not to me, but to the people in my proximity. They’re the ones I always feel I am letting down when I can’t be my own superhero. And they’re the ones I actually am letting down when I don’t ask for help when I can’t make it on my own.

Still, even after more than twenty-five years of a life that most people see as charmed, I can’t figure out how to make myself ask for help, or even just tell a friend that I am struggling—at least not until I am clearly broken. I don’t have a reason. I don’t have an answer. It’s like a limp that never goes away. It’s there to remind me of the damage—the injuries—that were probably never appropriately treated when they were still fresh. It’s there to remind me of a time when I didn’t—couldn’t—tell anyone that I was hurt. It’s there to remind me of a time that I was forced to deal with unthinkable things alone.

And so, maybe it makes sense that the limp takes me back to that lonely place for the less difficult struggles—because if I couldn’t tell anyone I was at the edge of death, how could I possibly conceive of burdening anyone else for anything less?