“Don’t fall in love with your suffering,” cautions philosopher and man who looks exactly as you’d expect, Slavoj Zizek. If you spend any time around mental health forums and posts, you might recognize the person in love with their own suffering. They are angry and more traumatized than you. You may have even been that person. I have.

As someone who has been disabled by my history, I understand the anger. It certainly doesn’t take a disability to create the anger that trauma and suffering causes. Abuse, trauma, mental health issues and just life cost enough. Getting angry is absolutely natural. Getting angry is useful. You just have to learn to understand what that anger is telling you to do and do that.

No one is handing out medals to which of us has suffered the most. And if they were, it’s not a game that’s worth the prize. Suffering may give you insight, compassion and empathy, but ultimately it has no meaning. When you’re suffering you hate it. That’s why it makes you angry. That is why it is something we are designed to avoid. It robs you of your time, your life and any chance at joy. Suffering is not a flex, it’s a tragedy.

Let’s imagine that there were an Olympics of Suffering. I’d imagine that anyone who spent a day as a prisoner in a Nazi Concentration Camp would have immediate advantage. That is suffering I don’t even want to imagine. But, you may say, what about Anne Frank? What about Anne Frank, for real?

Anne Frank was a young woman who suffered and died anonymously before age sixteen. Do you really think that she wouldn’t trade her famous diary for say, the chance of having a career as a writer? The chance of love and maybe marriage? Children? Grandchildren? Beyond all that, don’t you think she’d toss that diary in the fire for even a year of life as a free person, nevermind dying in bed of old age?

“But her diary put a beautiful, young and human face on the Holocaust.” I hear your mind. It is also in my mind. But wouldn’t it have been better for Anne if she had never been forced into hiding, eventually caught and shipped off to a death camp? I don’t want what she had to endure. Pretty sure she didn’t want it at the time either.

Even if Anne Frank won the Gold Medal, that doesn’t make Anne’s personal, lived experience tolerable for Anne. Her suffering is not eased by the fame of her diary today. It’s not eased by our tears for her. That was her shot at life, and that’s what she got. She got robbed.

No one is giving out points for suffering. Unfortunately, it seems we need some people like her to exist to keep us barely civil. But when we are speaking of our own lives, pain just feels like pain. It doesn’t feel redeeming or glorious. It makes you want to die.

Pain is also unavoidable. We’re all going to experience it. Some experience a helluva lot more than others. It is our moral obligation to try to spare and ease as much of it as possible. It’s also our sacred duty to spare and ease ourselves.

Our compassion for others needs to apply to ourselves. Anger is an empowering emotion. The anger we feel when we suffer is our justified, biochemical response that needs to push us out of suffering. That’s what your anger wants you to do. It wants you to make yourself feel better. It wants you to live. Your anger says, “This sucks! This isn’t right! You call this living?” We need to heed that call to heal.

No one gets gold stars for being in pain. So, be the person that helps you. Yeah, you’re gonna trauma dump, you’re gonna do and say dumb stuff in your pain and anger. You’ll make bad calls. Oh well. Be a mensch and apologize for causing someone pain, but then be sure to apologize to you for hurting you.

I don’t want to be in pain. I don’t want to be that person in the comments. I don’t think you do either. So let’s stop competing for pain. Pain blows. No one wants it. We don’t even have a choice because if you stay sick, you die. So, as the man said, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

Now drop and give me thirty minutes of self-care, Legends! 🌟

-J. Lakis

✌🏼❤️‍🩹❤️🏆🤟🏼

If you or anyone you know is experiencing domestic/sexual violence please contact RAIIN by phone or chat.

If you’re considering suicide, self harm, or have a mental health crisis: call or text 988 any time to talk or text with someone from the National Suicide Prevention and Crisis Hotline. Help is always available in English or Spanish.

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