Compassion and Comparison in Book Six: Trying to Hold On 2019

Sometimes, the hardest thing in the world is to accept that what you are going through is important. Maybe that’s just me? I read some truly terrible things in this job. A 7 year old child routinely molested by his mother. A 9 year old girl beaten by her mom’s boyfriend; the blond hair matted to her face with her own blood. A 19 year old kid who was failed by the system at every turn; so he went from victim to perpetrator. I see the people that have been most broken, most hurt, most traumatized… and my instinct?

Is to use their pain to delegitimize anything that I’m feeling. That frequent cry of, “Your life hasn’t been bad at all. Why aren’t you sunny and celebratory at all times when your life has been spared such dark and horrible things as you see every day via Work, Internet, News, Etc?” And obviously… obviously… I know intellectually that such comparisons are foolish. Hell, it has been my PB quote for as long as I’ve had a PB: “Each person feels pain in his own way, each has his own scars.” Haruki Murakami.

But so often I just… feel like a whiner. Of course, that is reinforced by so often being called a whiner before I was diagnosed. “Toughen up” was a common thing heard. The literal physical pain coursing through my body was “all in my head” and the emotional response to that pain was “choosing to be a victim” according to the people around me. So if I were to use words to describe someone else who experienced that… I would say that it was a person bravely pushing past their limitations everyday while being made to feel like doing so wasn’t good enough. But the truth is… sometimes I do wonder if I accept certain things in my life because of that comparison issue.

Really the two things I have in my life these days are my work and my marriage. My work is great but it subjects me to exposure regarding some of the most vile acts humans do to one another. My marriage is okay in a lot of ways… but it is not now nor has ever been what I could honestly describe as good. And that is sort of where this is coming from. At least in part. I see/read/encounter people so debilitated by mental illness that they can’t use the bathroom on their own. True Story. And compare it.
Someone so tortured by their own mental illness that it consumes them; they hide it from the world and attempt to ‘pass’ as hard as they can before ultimately failing and falling and being devoured. THAT is someone who we should throw our compassion to.
Me? I’m just upset that my Wife is able to make me believe that she loves me; but finds herself incapable or unwilling to do anything that honestly communicates or reflects those feelings. That’s… really not deserving of compassion.
In one scenario, you have someone that (through no fault of their own) is struggling with very serious Life or Death stuff...... in the other scenario, you have a Home Owner Attorney bitching that he’s in a mutant form of a loveless marriage.

Likely another of the reasons why I’m so.... I guess… less likely… to end my marriage in divorce. If my marriage is the only place where life is… far from measuring up… what right do I have to use a nuclear option?