Complex Feelings Elicited by the--
"You're so strong" comment--
I struggle with this: when someone comments that I’m very strong or resilient because of where I am, what’s happened to me, given my family members’ deaths.
I struggle, greatly, internally, because I am of two minds of it:
The first thought sometimes is a flippant shrug and my immediate [internal] sarcastic retort:
“Well, it’s not like I was given a choice in the matter.”
And I wasn’t: I didn’t pick this reality, all this bullshit.
Now, I get that they are trying to compliment me, which is nice.
And there are points where I pause and reconsider this, realizing that, —
Yes, I mean, I guess I did, have some choices. (That I didn’t think of as choices.)
Three come to mind, immediately:
1-I could have dropped out of my doctoral program and not finished my degree. Curled up in the fetal for a few months or years.
2-I could have become some sort of addict/junkie and lived in a perpetual state of oblivion, trying to forget, through self-medication.
3-I could have also chosen to end my life.
So, perhaps, though I didn’t think of them as choices, they were indeed options, less healthier ones that I could have opted for. But I could have done them, or others, like them. Made less healthy decisions.
It’s true.
And yet, I think the reason I feel deeply annoyed by and resistant to the question is not at all the fault of the person who is saying it. It has nothing to do with them or their intentions. Perhaps they mean well, but, also—
I think in those moments, when they say this, I am yet again reminded of my own powerless over my family’s story. I am also reminded that I have undergone a lot more grief and trauma than many others have and they can imagine; they remind me of this.
The burden of the suicides and my family, I already carry this around with me all the time, and on the rare moment that I have forgotten about it—to put it to the forefront of my mind—then with this comment, I am, once again, reminded of it.
Now, obviously, I don’t say anything and I try to control my facial expressions and responses so that I appear neutral, in response. It is not their fault. I don’t want to make them uncomfortable. And yet—-
I have tried to interrogate this, the discomfort and annoyance, that I feel since I so often hear this.
I am a firm believer that you have to own your own story. But there are parts of it, that I often times wish that I didn’t have to relive, again…and again…and again.
