I once had a conversation with a good friend of mine. She related to me her early struggles in college, in employment right after that, how badly she wanted success and recognition. I listened as best I could, but I was overcome with this sudden realization that our lives were so inherently different I just did not have the words to explain my feelings to her at all. When she was in college, I was surviving on minimum wage jobs, desperately trying to get through a few community college classes on my own. I failed. I had to bail from school. While she was getting started in her field, making money, building a professional reputation, I was working another hourly job, even though the pay was improving, and with all my progress I was still barely surviving on my own two feet. When she was going back home to get the support of her parents, I was already supporting a spouse who couldn't (wouldn't) work, drowning in debt, suicidal, hanging by a thread.
We get this wild feedback from friends like this who think "keep going" is somehow the thing we need to hear, when in reality most of them have never had to live year after year in a constant state of survival, and they just don't know what that does to our bodies and our minds and our souls.
My friend is brilliant and compassionate and wonderful, and I'm so happy she doesn't know what it feels like to be stretched so thin that anyone could see through you if they just looked. I hope she never knows that sensation. But it leaves me, and those like me, stuck in this bizarre place where we nod along to the surface conversation and hum underneath about all of the things we have done and said and been and endured just to keep breathing from one day to the next. I think I would have walked off that trail, too, River.
Yes, yes to all of this. I relate so viscerally, although of course our experiences are different. Both of my friends who encouraged me to stay on the trail had grown up in relatively supportive environments, neither had lost a parent, neither had PTSD or was totally on their own, without a safety net. I am so friggin glad I left the trail. And I will never go solo hiking again, because I actually hate it. It's lonely and scary. Some people need that solitude and desolation to push their edge. Some of us are challenged by stepping into community and accepting support. I've learned that I'm the latter, so that's what I need to be doing.
I loved learning that the origins of the word “quit” includes “be still” and “set free”. As in “I set myself free from”. Apparently it was during the Industrial Revolution that “quitter” gained a negative connotation; of course it did.
Thank you for sharing this. I look forward to reading your book soon!!
Oooh I love this so much, Hanna!! Thank you for so often reflecting in ways that teach me even more about what I've written about. I love it and appreciate it.
I once had a conversation with a good friend of mine. She related to me her early struggles in college, in employment right after that, how badly she wanted success and recognition. I listened as best I could, but I was overcome with this sudden realization that our lives were so inherently different I just did not have the words to explain my feelings to her at all. When she was in college, I was surviving on minimum wage jobs, desperately trying to get through a few community college classes on my own. I failed. I had to bail from school. While she was getting started in her field, making money, building a professional reputation, I was working another hourly job, even though the pay was improving, and with all my progress I was still barely surviving on my own two feet. When she was going back home to get the support of her parents, I was already supporting a spouse who couldn't (wouldn't) work, drowning in debt, suicidal, hanging by a thread.
We get this wild feedback from friends like this who think "keep going" is somehow the thing we need to hear, when in reality most of them have never had to live year after year in a constant state of survival, and they just don't know what that does to our bodies and our minds and our souls.
My friend is brilliant and compassionate and wonderful, and I'm so happy she doesn't know what it feels like to be stretched so thin that anyone could see through you if they just looked. I hope she never knows that sensation. But it leaves me, and those like me, stuck in this bizarre place where we nod along to the surface conversation and hum underneath about all of the things we have done and said and been and endured just to keep breathing from one day to the next. I think I would have walked off that trail, too, River.
Yes, yes to all of this. I relate so viscerally, although of course our experiences are different. Both of my friends who encouraged me to stay on the trail had grown up in relatively supportive environments, neither had lost a parent, neither had PTSD or was totally on their own, without a safety net. I am so friggin glad I left the trail. And I will never go solo hiking again, because I actually hate it. It's lonely and scary. Some people need that solitude and desolation to push their edge. Some of us are challenged by stepping into community and accepting support. I've learned that I'm the latter, so that's what I need to be doing.
Sounds to me like you've found the next book to write.....
I loved learning that the origins of the word “quit” includes “be still” and “set free”. As in “I set myself free from”. Apparently it was during the Industrial Revolution that “quitter” gained a negative connotation; of course it did.
Thank you for sharing this. I look forward to reading your book soon!!
Oooh I love this so much, Hanna!! Thank you for so often reflecting in ways that teach me even more about what I've written about. I love it and appreciate it.
There is nothing better than a breath of fresh "failure"...so exhilarating to be human and to return to yourself for rest.
Every single one of us 💜