“The holidays are hard for a lot of people this year.” You hear that sentiment a lot, don’t you? And you say it too. You say it when you consider your own sadness and your own struggles. It’s supposed to help. But it doesn’t.
When I was a little girl, I was frequently told that I need to finish my lumpy cream of wheat because, somewhere out there, people are starving. If I stopped shoveling the rapidly cooling, slightly slimy lumps into my mouth, I would be disrespecting the starving masses, doing them a great disservice, possibly quite literally ripping food from their months in some kind of act of entanglement.
The sentiment behind the “other people have it worse” is basically the same. It’s meant to be helpful. It’s even meant to be uplifting, in that whole, “Buck up, bitch, you’re fine” sort of way.
But the truth is, it’s actually better to say, “Buck up, bitch” to someone than it is to attempt to redirect their emotions onto an abstraction. The personal is stronger than the impersonal. Nebulous “other people” are precisely that, they refuse to come into focus. A person’s need for comfort and sympathy and help doesn’t just disappear when they’re ordered to switch gears and disavow said need in favor of faceless strangers.
People of many political persuasions fall into this particular emotional trap — I see it among conservatives, with their tough-love attitude, and among liberals, with their platitudes, and on the far left too, with their insistence of, “OH, YOU THINK YOU HAVE IT BAD, BITCH? WELL, WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE OF THIS TRIBE I RECENTLY READ ABOUT ON WIKIPEDIA WHO HAVE TO TAKE A BURNING ARROW TO THE NECK DURING THEIR COMING OF AGE CEREMONIES AND WHOSE HUNTING GROUNDS ARE NOW POLLUTED? FUCK YOU FOR THINKING YOU ARE CAPABLE OF SUFFERING NEXT TO THEIR DILEMMAS!”
Honestly, one of the things that scares me most about the world today is that it’s the far right that tends to avoid such rhetoric, seducing people with their very simple pitch of, “Hey! Feeling a little anxious? Join us, buddy! We’ve got the cure! It’s racism, but we won’t necessarily spell it out like that at first! First, we’ll give you a big old hug and confirm to you that your feelings are valid.”
See what I mean? When bad feelings are denied, they fester. It’s like having a monster in the room, and trying to ignore it as it feeds on you and thus grows more powerful. It’s not helpful, but downright dangerous.
This week, I took the difficult and painful step of telling someone I really care about that I need to move on from him. We made many amazing memories together, memories that carried me through so much of this bewildering year. But as his circumstances changed, he grew more distant. I had plenty of fun and found plenty of comfort in spending time with other people, but I finally acknowledged that it wasn’t enough. I was in pain. I had to say it. I had to admit that this was a bad season, and a dark time. It wasn’t how I wanted to spend the holiday. But it was the honest thing for me to do.
I could’ve laughed it off, as I normally do, and said, “Oh, who cares? Hundreds of thousands are dead in the States alone. Who cares about my little feefees?” But that would’ve been a betrayal of who I am.
If you’ve ever been a true friend to someone, you know exactly what I mean. When your friend hurts, you sit with them. You bear witness and you empathize with what they’re going through. We’re all a little universe unto ourselves, as Neil de Grasse Tyson is fond of saying, and what’s happening inside there, all of those stars colliding, those black holes opening up, is important. Lose sight of it and you lose sight of yourself.
So yes, many people are hurting. I’m one of them. I wish my passion for someone who can’t give me what I want was the sum of it, but it’s 2020, baby, and things are much worse than they look, worse than I’m willing to say in this column. I’m saying it to you, because it’s important. And if you’re reading this, and feel a similar pain, say it to yourself. Say to the people you know. Say it to the world.
Our burdens are not lifted when we pretend that they are not connected to the burdens of others. We’re all human beings, and we can’t do right for each other without first doing right by ourselves.
If you want to give yourself a gift this season, give yourself the gift of self-acknowledgment. And Merry Christmas, such as it is. Happy holidays.
Image credit: AlchemillaMollis