Over the weekend, my friend A. shared on Facebook that her boyfriend, B., had proposed to her. I was happy for them, of course, but I was also shocked by how jealous it made me feel. How unreasonable of me, I thought! Surely, if any two people I know deserve to be happy, it's A. and B. (not their actual initials, in case that's not obvious). A. had been in a relationship with a guy for a seven years, during which he had systematically told her that everything that was "her," all her perkiness, enthusiasm, and energy, was immature, stupid, and inappropriate. She had finally broken up with him, and all of us had breathed a sigh of relief. "Finally, A. is free of him!" Then there's B. He had gotten married to a woman who, well, is a total bitch, no two ways about it, and all of us had wondered why he had stayed with her. They'd finally gotten divorced, and we'd all thought, "finally, B. is free of her!" At another friend's wedding last summer, A. took me aside and told me, very excitedly, that she and B. were going out. They didn't want everyone to know yet cause the break-ups were still recent, but they knew I didn't live locally, and the only one of the bunch I knew more than a little was A. - I didn't get along with either of the exes well, and when I'd lived locally, it had been impossible to get to know B. without spending time with the bitch he was attached to at the hip. Telling me was pretty safe. Yet I felt a little jealous then, too. It was a terrible feeling. Why couldn't I just be happy for my friends finally finding happiness together? Surely they, of all people, deserved to finally find joy.
I've never thought of myself as a jealous person before, so I've been trying to figure out why I feel jealous. What is it about this situation that makes me feel so envious? And then it struck me. It's not that I don't think my friends deserve to be happy. Quite the contrary. I think they DO deserve it. But it leads immediately to my thinking, what about what I deserve? What about my happy ending? Haven't I got just as much right to have something good happen to me, to have the things I want happen?
This concept, of what I "deserve," is one that I've really been struggling with the last few weeks. On the one hand, no one "deserves" anything. I don't really believe in a karmic scale or a cosmic balance. As awful as it is to acknowledge, it is possible for bad thing after bad thing to happen to a person who has never done anything wrong, and it's just as possible for good things to pile on to someone who never did a thing to earn those good things. Life isn't fair. Yet even though I know, objectively, that that's the case, that doesn't really help. I want to think that, in the long run, if I do the right thing, work hard, am honest, am a good friend, that good things will come to me, because I've worked for them and I've earned them.
On the other hand, I think in general I know when I've really done my best, and when I've done my best, I would like to think that would be recognized and rewarded. I'll get a bonus at my job. I'll get praise for my completing the assignment. I'll develop a strong bond with a friend. In many cases, this has happened in my past. Yet, right now, this narrative is falling apart, and it's causing me a lot of problems.
What do I deserve? I find I don't want much in life. I don't care about money one way or the other - it's nice when I've got some, but I've managed when I don't. I don't care about my house - it was awesome when I lived in a four bedroom house, but I was just as content when I lived in an 180 square foot apartment with a shared bathroom. I don't care where I live - I prefer cities and decent sized towns, but I've spent months living in rural areas and it's got it's charms too. What do I care about? I do care about my job - all I want is a position doing something that I care about. I care about being alone - I'm lonely, and I want someone else (read: a significant other) in my life, someone who cares about me and who I care about. I keep coming back to a sticking point: don't I deserve those things?
This dialog has been going round and round in my head, and yet it keeps coming back in the same loops. The job one, I'm dealing with. It's under my control, and I'm changing it at the snails pace that I can. I just wish I'd figured out just how unhappy I was with the way things are right now, so I could have done something about it sooner. It's the relationship one that's really causing me problems. I've been single 5 out of the last 6 years. I haven't gotten in to relationships with people I wasn't genuinely interested in. I've treated my relationships seriously, and done my best to be myself, and be there for the other person. Everyone keeps telling me, "do the things you love, and you'll meet someone." I've done the things I love endlessly, so much so that I'm not even sure I love them any more, I've gone out, I've gone to museums and festivals and concerts and events. I've traveled all over the world, and throughout the US, going to conventions and celebrations and even a cruise. I've put myself out there. And I've hardly met a soul. I've made only a handful of friends this way, and only met one of three boyfriends by doing those things I loved.
So, the inner monologue goes like this:
Me: "I deserve to be happy! I deserve to have good things happen to me?"
Inner Demon: "Do I really? Then why haven't they happened?"
Me: "Maybe I haven't tried hard enough." This one leads on a dangerous path - it makes me think that I should be doing more, but the reality is I HAVE done a lot, I've worked really hard. I can refute that this is the reason, so I move on to another. "Maybe it's just not time yet." This one is also tough. I feel like I've waited long enough, like I've "done my time" as a single woman. "Maybe I just haven't met the right person yet." True, presumably, and totally useless as a response, because it just leads to the question, "why haven't I met the right person yet?" which has no answer. "Maybe life just isn't fair." Well, I knew that all along, but again, it's a useless answer. I'm not likely to just give up, and so the only way to confront life being unfair is to keep trying. And that invariable leads to the last maybe, and the one I haven't figured out how to deal with yet. "Maybe it's me." This is the hardest, the most insidious, and the one I have the least counter argument to. It's a very simple trap: Occam's razor, and nearly irrefutable. The easiest explanation, requiring the least cavaets, is probably the correct one. Either all of maledom (and the couple members of femaledom I've been interested in) doesn't realize how great I am. That seems unlikely. Alternative, I'm not that great. A very difficult thing to accept, and one that I'm not actually sure is true. I'm not gonna claim I'm the greatest catch in the ocean, and in my head I can list the things I think are my strengths - a useful exercise, but not the purview of this post - yet it always ends up coming back to, "if all those things are true, then why I haven't I found anyone yet?" Another question with no answer. I think, of all the things I've been dealing with the last couple months, this one might well be the one that leaves me feeling lowest.
See, if it's me, then I'm in a bind. It means that whatever I do is part of the problem. It means that where-ever I go I won't escape the problem, because it's in me. It leaves me feeling like there's no point in trying, like there's no way I can "win." I end up asking, "don't I deserve to be happy?" and, since I can't seem to escape the conclusion that I'm the problem, the only answer I can produce is, "no, I don't deserve to be happy, because I'm too damaged/silly/lazy/etc." - the reason changes, but the message remains the same. In the end, it feels like a circular message: "If I deserved to be happy, I would have found happiness already. Since I am not happy, that must mean I don't deserve to be happy."
I have no answers for how to deal with this. I haven't got the least clue. I know that I can't seem to escape from it, though, and that it generates hopelessness like nothing else I've ever found. It generates jealousy of my friends, even though I want them to be happy. It generates self-loathing and self-defeatest attitudes, because it feels unchangeable and unanswerable. It leaves me wondering where such destructive inner monologues even come from. How do we get like this? Why do we do these things to ourselves?
I wish I had something heartening to say this week, but I really don't. I'm actually not as low as I was last week, but I just feel so weighted down by depression over all that I can't seem to push through the trees enough to see the forest. Maybe next week, I'll have figured out some answers. For now, I'll keep pushing on, and remembering and using the strategies I came up with last week for dealing with bad days. ;)
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