Be a monster
The court agrees: you were treated unfairly. Now what? On sympathy, helplessness, and refusing to spend the rest of your life proving what happened to you.
You've got another story about why things didn't work out. A good story. Detailed. Full of people who let you down, circumstances stacked against you, and you, the person who really did try.
I'm willing to believe every word of it.
Are you going to spend another ten years telling it?
Reality can be cruel without any educational purpose whatsoever. You can get cheated. Someone can take credit for your work. A person you trusted can turn out to be a piece of shit. Sometimes you really do everything you can and still get punched in the fucking face.
No hidden lesson. No guaranteed reward for enduring it. Some shit just happened.
But after it happened, you still had some amount of life left. And I'm interested in who you're going to hand that over to now.
The same person? The same circumstances? An endless replay of the moment you were treated unfairly?
The court of martyrs convenes in your head.
You bring the evidence. Here's where I was betrayed. Here's where nobody supported me. Here's where someone else had money, connections, a decent family, and room to make mistakes. Here's where I deserved better.
Everything is neatly arranged. Witnesses summoned. Speech prepared.
And the court rules: yes, you were treated unfairly.
What changed the next morning?
Did a job appear? Did the money come back? Did the person apologize? Were those years credited back to your account?
Or did you just get permission to do nothing again, because your reasons are valid?
I'm not saying nobody is to blame. There is a very specific asshole who screwed you over. There are decisions specific people should answer for. Demanding justice, getting back what's yours, asking for help: all of that is normal.
But sometimes “Who's to blame?” quietly becomes the only question you're still willing to answer.
Because the next one is much more uncomfortable.
You can't get away with a convincing story there. You'll have to try something. Maybe get rejected again. Discover that some of your own decisions were shitty too. Learn something you don't know how to do yet.
And become someone who might fail again.
It's easier to remain someone who was never given a chance.
Especially if you've gathered an understanding audience.
You tell the story. They feel sorry for you. Tell you you're a good person, that you were unlucky, that anyone would have broken in your position. For a while, you feel better.
People do need sympathy. Sometimes another person's support is exactly what gets you through a day you can't handle alone.
But you can start using it like a drug.
Bringing the same story every time to get the same dose of relief. Changing nothing between conversations. Coming back when things get hard again.
Then suddenly noticing that a practical question annoys you.
Fuck off with your “have you tried.” You were supposed to tell me how hard I have it.
This is where it gets interesting.
Because your misfortune has already secured a permanent role in your life. It's how people understand you. It's how you get attention. It explains why you're standing still.
And if you start finding your way out, you'll have to give up some of those explanations.
You won't be able to blame every outcome in advance on what happened to you once. You'll have to find out who you are now. What you can do. Where you're lying to yourself. Where you really need help, and where it's long past time to do the unpleasant thing you've been putting off.
Sometimes people cling to their tragedy partly because they haven't imagined themselves outside it in years.
You become a spectator of your own life.
You watch another episode, comment on it, complain about the writing. What a nightmare. Everything's against the main character again. When is he finally going to catch a break?
But the season ends, the next one starts, and you're still sitting in the same seat.
You've even learned to describe it beautifully. You've got precise words, convincing explanations, an entire theory of why there's no way out.
You just haven't checked the door in a long time.
There's a phrase, “learned helplessness.” And to me, the scariest thing about it is the possibility of getting so used to having no influence that you stop noticing even the things you can still affect.
It didn't work before. Then it didn't work again. You were stopped, punished, ridiculed. Now every suggestion to try something meets a ready-made “there's no point.”
Maybe there really was no point back then.
Have you tested this particular possibility? With these people? With the skills you have today? Or has an old rejection been given the lifelong right to speak for every future attempt?
Not everything is available to you. But between “I can't do everything” and “nothing I do makes any difference,” there can be an entire life you've canceled in advance.
The inconvenient person who stopped begging for permission to make every move. Who can take a rejection without turning it into a description of their personality. Who can say “you don't get to treat me like that” and then actually change something.
Some people won't like you afterward.
Especially the ones who had it easy while you were being understanding, putting up with everything, and talking about how hard it was.
They'll call you harsh. Selfish. Say you used to be different.
Maybe you used to be free of charge.
And you'll have to endure unpleasant feelings without immediately concluding that you've chosen the wrong path.
Does it hurt to admit you've wasted years? Yes. That admission probably won't feel like a massage.
Is it scary to submit work people might tear apart? Of course. You've finally given reality a chance to answer.
Tired after a hard day? It happens. Not every difficult day means you need to drop everything and urgently find something that never requires you to make an effort.
But “it hurts because it's supposed to” can easily turn into a stupid religion too. You can spend years putting up with something you should have left long ago and take pride in your endurance. You can destroy yourself with work and call it proof of how serious you are.
When you're rebuilding your life after setbacks, I'm interested in what you're enduring it for, and what changes as a result.
If you're learning, building, breaking free of a dependency, part of the process may be hard. If you're just letting people walk all over you again, extra pain won't make it useful.
You can start with something so small you'd be embarrassed to include it in a heroic biography.
Write an email. Name your price. Turn down another request. Open a document. Ask for specific help instead of having another conversation about how hopeless everything is.
No promise of a new life starting Monday. No announcement to everyone you know that you're a different person now. Just leave something behind at the end of today besides another explanation.
You can be a victim of someone else's actions. You don't have to erase that fact to start living again.
But you don't have to spend every year that follows proving it either.
I don't want to discover one day that I explained so convincingly to everyone why my life couldn't work out that I never actually gave it a chance.