I usually don't mind being asked, "how are you?" It's a token that the person asking is thinking about my well-being, at least enough to ask the question, if not to listen to my response. It is a customary greeting, and it's better than most others I could think of.
But lately, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of people asking, because it could mean one of many things, two of which are:
1) I know you've been struggling, and I care about you, so I genuinely want to know what is going on.
2) I know you've been struggling, and I want to feel you out to see if you are emotionally resilient enough to help me unload my baggage.
I know this, not only because it has been done to me on countless occasions by other people, but also because I am sure I have done it myself. So this post is self-accusation as much as a rant against the treatment I have received from others.
The truth is, I am fine as long as I can talk about what is bothering me on my own terms. My terms include that you have to understand that I am grieving for something that might not be real for you but is catastrophically real for me. If you are unable to acknowledge that, I don't want to talk about it with you, but I definitely don't want you to assume that just because I'm not talking about it I am not thinking about it. I can't deal with being told that I should just shut up and be happy. I can't deal with being told that my fears and worries are irrational. I can't deal with being told that "everything will be okay, you'll see." I can't even deal with being told that it isn't my fault so why do I torture myself over it.
Grief doesn't make logical sense, particularly not to the person not experiencing it. For years and years I wondered why my mom grieved so hard (in my mind, irrationally hard) over the deaths of her father and brother, when we know that people die all the time and we will see them again in the next life. I hope I can be excused by the fact that I was a teenager who didn't understand how life works.
But the Millennial Generation, and those who raised them, seem to all have this problem to a certain extent. The prevalent belief in society is that "If you can dream it, you can do it!" and everyone can have a trophy if they just work hard enough ... and even if they don't work very hard, if they put in a token effort, they can have a trophy anyway, because it is the duty of everyone around them to be nice and fair and inclusive. We aren't equipped to process our own pain and sense of loss, because First World Problems are just that. Hey, to put it the way a friend did, we aren't starving in China with only one arm, so what's the big deal?
And someone else's pain? Well, that just doesn't compute. We want to apply the "If you can dream it, you can do it!" philosophy by telling them that if they would just adjust their attitude, everything would fall into place. Um ... no. There is a lot of value in positive thinking and in focusing on your own attitude as the source of your feelings rather than your circumstances as the source of your feelings. BUT. You can't help someone by making them feel that the big emotions involved in the grieving process are not valid or important. Chronic pain and illness? It's not all in their head, and they don't just "get used to it". Infertility? It's not as easy as quickly changing the plan from procreation to adoption without some feelings involved. Unemployment? More complicated than just going downtown and dropping in on businesses and handing them your resume.
Some advice to grieving people is good, but most of it is unwanted and unnecessary and can be downright damaging. What I'm really hearing with all these social media posts ("Seven things not to say to a migraine sufferer", "21 things you shouldn't say to a stay-at-home mom", "58 ways to avoid divorce") is that most of us are feeling, rightly or not, that empathy is a lost art, and we're tired, so tired, of being made to feel like we can't possibly have things to grieve about when we live in a time and place with so many things to be thankful for.
I think it is a form of survivor's guilt (and I didn't come up with this on my own--a friend pointed out to me today that this has a lot to do with my current situation, and I think she is right). It is a good thing to be aware of the horrible conditions people suffer in places like sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian slums. It is a good thing for me to be aware that not everyone who desires parenthood has the ability to get pregnant easily and carry a baby to term. However, it ceases to be a good thing when we are not allowed to enjoy any of our material prosperity without feeling like we don't deserve it because "starving children in Africa" or I am not allowed to mourn the loss of my plan for a healthy, risk-free pregnancy because "isn't modern medicine so great? If this had happened a hundred years ago, I might be risking death, and at least I can have a baby and isn't that what I always wanted?"
I do feel guilty. I feel guilty because I wanted a husband and a baby to love for so long that I'm still stunned about having them dropped in my lap like this, when I have many friends and family members who are still waiting. And I feel even more guilty because I still can't see, with the onset of our health complications, the possibility of a c-section being anything but irreparably traumatic. For some people, having a baby is enough, and they don't give a flip whether they push it out or have it cut out of them. For me, it's not enough. It is so far from what I expected and wanted that I don't know that it is something I could ever emotionally recover from. Does that mean I am lacking resilience? Probably. Would it be best if I could just suck it up and be happy? Heck yes. But does it give someone else permission to tell me that it's not a big deal and I am being irrational? I don't think it does.
As much as I hate the expectation that everyone is responsible for being so sensitive to the needs and individual concerns of every single person they talk to, to the point that if someone is offended by what you say, it is all on you and not on them; I still think the majority of us are in need of some thought and education in empathy. In the big scheme of things, my problems aren't much, but they are real problems, and I hope that, at the very least, I can figure out how to use this to be a kinder person, even when other people's grief doesn't make sense to me.
