Hi Jack, I am fairly sure you check in here regularly. I am going to give you some unsolicited advice now, it is coming from a good place, but it is going to be of the 'take no prisoners' variety. While I'm sure you'll disregard it as I am an evil troll, it is well meant.
Shut up about your woes. What you are suffering from is a case of 'being a human'. I will not play misery top trumps with you, but I certainly could, and the truth is it's most likely that the person next to me, and the person next to them, and the person next to them (you see where this is going now, right) could do it too. Sometimes life is hard, sometimes life throws crappy things at you and you know what, that's just what it is. We have all got our baggage, and we could all be drowned in it. It really sucks.
But you know what, it also throws good things at you, all the bleeping time. And you are not getting that. Sure, I've seen posts from you about the positives, but they don't ring true, and when the chips are down you always circle back to the bad stuff. You've got to stop doing that. For your own sake. And something else for free, all that bad stuff, there's things in it that are good. Firstly, and basically, pain teaches us things, even if it's just that we can cope with it, that it builds us, and strengthens us. It teaches us about human kindness when people show it to us when things are tough. It teaches us that, often, humour and laughter and smiles are to be found in everything, every day.
I will give you a personal anecdote here. I was once waiting for an MRI to assess the stage of a cancerous tumour. I was scared, so scared, I was not a big, brave person, I knew I had cancer, but I did not know how bad it was and I did not know what treatments I was going to have to go through, and I was *not* a good, strong cancer patient. I was a nervous wreck. There was a huge backlog for the MRI machine that day, as I'd been raced through to get it done quickly, so my mum and I were sitting for hours in a waiting room. She eventually got out a pack of cards (duck knows *why* my mum had a pack of cards in her handbag, but she is a clever woman) and to the bemusement of everyone around us we started playing knock out whist. Then, eventually, we drew an audience, then a couple of random players, and the whole room was full of people connecting. You know what, I could choose to remember that day as an awful day, and it is my tendency to do that, but I don't, I choose to remember that hour or so, where everyone laughed and the world was ok for a bit. And the bit after, when my mum and I went and sat on a bench in the pretty hospital garden for a bit before we left, and just chatted about plants and gardening and medical students and made up names and lives for them all. The point is, I'm nothing special, I don't have a huge inner strength, or a particularly stunning personality, but everyone can choose to do this. Not be a Pollyanna, but there is always joy if you are prepared to pick that.
I don't see you picking joy. I see you doubling down on whatever sadness there is currently in your life. I'm truly sorry, but there will always be sadness, and it is ok to spend a few hours or a few days dwelling on that (though I would always suggest doing that privately and with people you can trust, the ideal would be with professionals who can guide you through it), but I have learnt, starting when I was so very young, that there is always a possibility for joy and laughter and, it sounds trite, but don't underestimate it, fun, to be had, even in the darkest of days. Fix on that, remember those moments and let the painful ones go. It's harder than I make it sound. I know. The pain will keep coming back, and you can let it in for short periods, but don't wallow, keep on going. Not manically, but calmly, just let the days happen until you wake up one day and realise that there is less pain. However, there's a problem. Pain can be attractive, having it bad can be attractive, you get sympathy, and love, and attention. I know, I've gone in for that too. It's so easy to endlessly recycle pain and never move on from it. I see you doing that and you should stop. Plus, it feels unfair, so you (generic you) focus on that too. 'Why me? Why is it always me?' I can help with that one though. It's not always you, or rather it is, but it's always everyone else too. There's always something, nearly always, and I think the best thing I can say here is that you have to accept it, maybe some level of pain (mental, physical, emotional) is part of the human condition and rather than rail against those parts, accept them (this is dull constant work for me and for most) and celebrate the days that are wonderful as shining lights in your life, rather than your right all the time. We are all of us both not special and incredibly special all at the same time.
Now, to the toughest love part. You're being ungrateful, everyone is sometimes, but you are being especially ungrateful in my, obviously not so humble, opinion. I will compare you to me now, and to millions of other people, I have pain, I have a lot of pain, I also have very limited opportunities. I have to work in a job that I find often dull, it's certainly not what I thought my life would be. I have to do it, because I have bills to pay, on my own, and a child to support. I live in a small house, I struggle often, I don't have any *big* chances to do good. I would like to do some good, but I am short on time and energy to do that once I'm done with the business of living and staying alive. But mostly I have no platform. You, though, you have choices. You have a platform, you have opportunities (please don't tell me that you don't and that you are too much of a maverick, you've written in newspapers, you've been on a daily TV show on BBC1, you have sold many, many books). You have a voice and a career doing something that you apparently love. Those are such huge gifts and I feel like maybe you have lost sight of them, because they are somehow normalised to you now (that's not a criticism, that's just the way of people, we get accustomed to what we have). So, stop using that platform to explain to everyone that your life is hard, I'm happy to accept some of it is, because, as extensively covered, it is for us all. Use it to bring joy, to lift the world up a little bit, and celebrate that good fortune (that, ironically came out of some of your pain, as a lot of good fortune does). Well done on managing that, by the way, now stop cycling back to the pain, and move on. Focus on people having a worse time than you, that helps me, and lift them up. Stop being thirsty, you don't need any more validation, follow that need up in therapy, not online. Stop misery top-trumps, they are awful and they drag *everyone* down. Crack on and be better. Talk about this in therapy. Not what has gone wrong, but how it's made you who you are, and what positives and negative there are from that. Resolve to fix the negatives (even if it feels unfair that you have to do that, I'm afraid it's only you who can). Good luck. It's hard, but you're obviously an intelligent woman, you could do this if you chose to. If you feel you are at rock bottom, then I know it seems unfair to have to do more work, but when could there be a better time to start? Don't recycle behaviours, find new ones.
Ok. That is an essay.
TLDR - Jack. Shape up. You're just experiencing life, not some exquisite form of torture only inflicted on you. Make better choices. Go back to therapy. Celebrate your gifts and your opportunities. Stop looking for external validation. For god's sake STOP PLAYING MISERY TOP TRUMPS FROM TODAY. Best of luck.
are almost like a cult in a way.
