Proportional Pain and My Guilty Genes

Scrabble doesn’t come with a question mark, so we’ll have to make do without one

There once was a girl (A) who didn’t pass her cheerleader tryouts, and she was upset. There was also a girl (B) whose boyfriend dumped her, and she was upset. But then there was a girl (C) whose friend was dying of cancer, and she was upset.

Before us we have three (fictional) girls, and each is upset. Who, in your opinion, is most upset?

Please don’t answer that because it’s a trick question. I believe that it’s not fair to compare people’s pain because each is suffering in their own right. So yes, one situation seems way more serious than the others, but does that mean that the other two aren’t upset and don’t have a right to be? No. The fact that one person is worried about cancer and the other is worried about boys doesn’t mean that the one worrying about boys isn’t distraught and in pain, and you can’t discount that.

That said, I am human and sometimes I fail at upholding my own high standards. I look at this girl who is throwing a tantrum because she didn’t get the teacher she wanted for a certain subject and can’t stop thinking about girls in many parts of the world who have to fight to get an education, and often don’t win. I want to scream at her, “just appreciate what you have!”

But then those thoughts lead me to one of the most depressing inner conversations I regularly have. I know I’m suffering, and I know my pain is real, but at the same time look at the world, look at how many people live in terrible pain due to poor hygiene and distance from medical help, and see how many of them continue living completely normally. In comparison, I’m just acting like a baby. But those thoughts don’t make my pain go away and it still gets in the way of me doing everything people my age do.

So when I have these conversations, I force myself to the conclusion that it is important to keep things in proportion and not feel too sorry for myself, because compared to some my troubles are not that bad. I do think you need to keep going and try to pick yourself up, and that’s what I do. But there is also a real reason for sadness, and it’s okay to let yourself feel it.

When someone I know is suffering from a horrible headache, I bite my tongue and never let the “now you know how I feel all the time” escape. But I always think it. It’s not that I think their pain is lesser because it’s a one off thing, it’s just that it gets frustrating when people have no way to understand what I’m going through. I want him or her, for just a minute, to try to imagine what it’s like to feel what he or she is feeling every day and how hard it would be to manage.

Then I feel guilty. For not focusing solely on the person I’m with, but mostly for treating myself like I’m the top-sufferer, like I’m the most unfortunate. I promise you I do not forget how lucky I am to have everything that I have. But then after feeling guilty, I feel even guiltier because it’s almost like I just betrayed myself by my sort of accusation that I’m just exaggerating.

It’s exhausting.

So to girl A I say that there will be more opportunities in life and this way she’ll have more free time to hang out with her friends. To girl B I say that he’s a fool for breaking up with her and if she ever needs a wing-woman I’m her girl. To girl C I tell her how sorry I am and offer her my shoulder.

I allow myself only a minute to contemplate how it seems no one is ever that happy.

 

Yours truly,

Ella

 

Song Quote:

I find it hard to take, when people run in circles it’s a very, very mad world. -Mad World, Tears for Fears

 

Next Week:

My Relationship with Taylor Swift

Get ready to tweet along with me using #TaylorReadThis, because I need your help getting her to see it! So as of next Sunday when I put it up, we’re going to bombard twitter with this hash tag and the link to the post and try to get her attention. You with me?!

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Excavations

The excavation site

Hidden beneath a pile of other important things in my drawer, lies a folder that is full to the bursting with slips of paper. Every page has some words, written at some point in my life, and when I open that folder, I travel back in time.

It’s amazing really, how I’m instantly transported to how I was feeling, where I was, and what I was doing when I wrote something down. There have been many days in my young life, but the ones that I remember the most are the ones when I had a sudden urge to write- and I took myself up on it.

Sporadically in life, pretty much from age six, I would get bouts of motivation, generally in the direction of: “I’m gonna be a writer!!! I’m gonna get published! I’m going to be in The New York Times!” During one such bout, when I was around twelve years old, I sat cross legged on my bed, and wrote something on a piece of ripped notebook paper. It was my old bedspread, the highly colorful one, and I was staring at the mirror that was glued on the back of my door (before it fell, and broke).

This is what I wrote:

   I wish my mirror were my life. When I look in my mirror, I see what I am meant to be. I see myself with a fancy hair do, all dressed up at my very own book signing. I want to be famous for my writing.

  I look in the mirror, but I don’t look the way I really do. I look like a writer, posing for a picture while she writes her next bestseller.

  My mirror is the only one that knows; knows what my life should look like.

To be honest, there are pieces written in bouts of motivation from when I was much younger than 12, but they’re slightly embarrassing, so my drawer is their permanent residence.

Besides the motivated snippets, the folder is mostly full of products of hard times. It’s sad to think sometimes that most of my poems are ones of great depression, sadness, guilt and discontent. At the same time, that’s what I use my writing for: it’s a place I can turn to when it feels like nothing else is right. To quote the great Oscar Wilde,  “Words! Mere words!… what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of flute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”

Fast-forwarding a year, I sat after quite a horrible day and wrote this (and I’m making sure not to edit myself, even though I really want to):

Why is the world such a hard place to be?

Why can’t I just spread my wings and be free?

Be heard, be known, for the things I can do,

Let it be known, that I will make it through.

 

I don’t want to think that no one will hear it,

If I fail, I won’t admit it.

I just want a chance to be heard,

Help create a better world.

 

I don’t think that’s taking it too far,

If I just keep trying,

It can’t be too hard,

I will keep reaching for the stars.

 

But it all comes back too:

 

Why is the world such a hard place to be?

Why can’t I just spread my wings and be free?

Be heard, be known, for the things I can create,

If only there wasn’t so much at stake.

 

My hopes my dreams, my innocent will,

To help the world with the best of my skills.

I can write the poem, that comes to terms with the world,

With just that single world that will be heard:

 

Free.

 

But now a tear is tracing its track down my check,

For in writing, it certainly sounds absurd.

 

At least it  has a slightly positive edge to it. Some of these transport me to a really, really bad time. Like this one:

Let’s make the bed,

Fold the dirty clothing,

Pack up our bags,

And hang up the happy drawings.

 

Throw away the tissues,

Return the garbage to its place,

Comb through our hair,

And patch up our face.

 

Strangle all those sobs,

Dry up all those tears,

Leave not one trace of sadness

“I was never here”.

 

There was a lot going on. I had no choice: life kept moving, so I had to as well. I’m worried I might be depressing you all, but I know that I also worry too much (there’s a poem about it). I’ll only share one more with you. I wrote this just last year, when I was worrying about something:

Borders are

As borders go

Separating,

Existing.

 

Some borders are paper thin, hazy, fragile,

But hold within them

The power to destruct.

 

These borders are

Long

Thin

Lines.

 

Tread carefully.

 

But the border, the line, that

Scares me most,

Is the one I balance on when I act

By the sheer power of feeling

Empathy, love, worry.

 

Then I walk the border of

Making

Things

Worse.

A single toe out of line, and that power to destruct

Is free.

 

And on that supremely uplifting note, I will now stop the barrage of sadness, and share some facts of happiness:

1. I now have a place to write regularly, and it’s full of positivity! I have self-discipline, and write regularly, and you are all lovely people, and leave me uplifting comments. I now can write of happiness, and not just sadness.
2. I have a much better support system in place than I used to. My family is as great as they always have been, but I now also have a bunch of friends that really care about me.
3. I have matured since I was 12, and though I still write poems of depression in epic proportions, I also hold on to some perspective. I have a good life, even with Fibromyalgia.
4. My math test is over! I don’t know if you feel the same way I do, but in my book, this is definitely a fact of happiness. I was stressing out about it so much, but it went really well, so now I believe all my hard work was worth it and I am happy. Next one in three weeks.

 

I hope I have now lifted your spirits after having lowered them. Otherwise, I would feel guilty. There’s a poem about it.

Wishing you all a wonderful day and happy reading,

Yours truly,

Ella

 

Song Quote:

Welcome to the inner workings of my mind. –Hurricane, Ms Mr

 

While giving my drawer a photo-shoot, I realized I was photographing one of my most prized possessions: my Song Quotes notebook. It is a beautiful little thing….

 

A hundred points to anyone who can leave a comment below stating which books are on my shelf… (hint: there are fifteen in the picture). Let the games begin!