For Those Who Self-Destruct Every Day Just to Survive
Yes, you need to try and change, but there’s something else you need to remember
Image by Stas Svechnikov on Unsplash
I keep coming back to this quote I came across about a month ago:
“You’re not a bad person for the ways you tried to kill your sadness.”
I was hesitant to write about it because I didn’t want to sound like I was advocating unhealthy or immoral things.
But it spoke to me. Because I have a history of trying to “kill my sadness,” and it’s pretty ugly.
And I can’t summon up the courage to confess to you exactly how I try to kill it, but I’ll give you a little peek.
I smoke. A lot.
Cigarette prices are already crazy high, and yet I know without a doubt, I’ll pay them regardless without a second thought.
I used to have a beer on the weekends. Well, that weekend pleasure has now bled into the weekdays.
I take three medications a day: one to keep the depression at bay, one to stabilize my mood, and one to help me sleep.
But the “fun” teacher whose students love her, the mom and wife and woman who seems to have to all together, doesn’t.
And if you don’t “have it together,” come rest here. Because you’re in good company.
The truth is we live in a painful world, a cruel world, and sometimes there seems to be no easy escape.
So we eat too much, smoke too much, drink too much, have affairs, or do a thousand other things that hurt ourselves or others.
It’s not right, okay.
It’s self-destructive.
But every day, we’re faced with demons that refuse to die. And sometimes, even within the span of a minute, we give in to dangerous temptations because our misery, hopelessness, or grief is yelling at max volume to just make it stop.
We don’t want to feel ugly or fat or stuck in a marriage for the kids. We don’t want to feel the pain of an abusive father or an absent mother. We don’t want to feel lonely or unloved.
We don’t want to feel that our whole life has been one screw-up after another. We don’t want to imagine life without a person we’ve lost. We don’t want to go through the agony of a broken heart when a lover tells us it’s over.
We’re so tired of carrying the mountain of baggage on our backs. Our anxiety. Our depression. Our sexless marriage. Our dead-end job that barely pays the bills.
So we surrender. We silence the sorrow even if every bone in our body knows we’re doing it the wrong way.
And that moment of stillness is so euphoric, it’s addictive.
So the cycle begins. We silence the sorrow time after time with “those” things — whatever those things are — that bring us up or calm us down.
And unfortunately, I can’t tell you how to fix it.
I’m there with you.
But I can tell you this.
You have a reason for being on this earth. You are not a monster because yoga or hitting the gym didn’t turn your tears into sunshine. You are not a failure because eight glasses of water, more fruits and vegetables, and walking around the block didn’t heal your shattered spirit.
You’re a human who’s hurting.
And maybe you’ve made mistakes, horrible mistakes, that cost you a marriage, a job, or everything you had.
You’re still worthy of being loved. You’re still somebody the world needs. You’re still somebody someone else needs.
And so am I.
And if anything can heal us, those are the things we need to remember.
And maybe one day soon, we can “kill the sadness” without killing ourselves.