Making It on Your Own

A little while ago, I wrote an article about critical thinking where I advocated that people question everything they read. This spurred my thinking in a different direction. How can I describe the way I’ve achieved success in overcoming some of the debilitating mental health issues I’ve faced? What are the most important things I can tell you about my life that will save you time and keep you from making the same mistakes? The lesson today is a harsh one. It will be uncomfortable to hear but that’s alright. Remember that there is a huge benefit to being uncomfortable. We aren’t growing or getting better at anything unless we are uncomfortable. So settle in, grab your coffee, and feel that fear rising in your stomach. Get those butterflies moving around. Ready? Let’s go.

You are completely on your own.

As David Goggins, the American ultrarunner and ex-navy seal would say, “No one is coming to save you.” Now I highly disagree with many things that David Goggins says but this one I have found to be the absolute truth. Like many others out there I once suffered from the delusion that the world is a good and fair place. Our society does everything it can to promote this vision. We are relatively protected from death, destruction, and dismemberment. We have a police force that locks away the bad guys. We have insurance and seatbelts and cutting-edge medical treatments and therapists to talk to about our problems. Our happy and positive social media accounts talk about equity and inclusion and feature bright and bubbly advertisements with smiling casts of actors. Our jobs provide cute teambuilding exercises and guard us against harassment and maltreatment.

We are safe. Not happy, not fulfilled, but safe. Safer than at any other time in human history. In this safety, we forget how to handle hardship. We are so used to having things handed to us that we forget about the benefits of struggle, pain, competition, and fear. Yes, we can live a safe and miserable life, moping through our daily commitments, avoiding the gym and watching Netflix before bed, eating ice cream while we bemoan the fact that we are once again passed up for promotion at work. There is nothing wrong with this life. There is nothing wrong with being content with what you have. But for many out there, this daily existence is an exercise in prolonged pain. For me, as I struggled with OCD, depression, and social anxiety, it was purgatory. If I wanted to get over any of this stuff, I knew I would have to enter hell, I would have to face worse pain, worse hardship, worse confusion. Therefore, I made every excuse I could not to do this work. I still make some of those excuses today. Many times they are subconscious. It can take time to bring them to the surface let alone face them.

Our collective societal excuse is that we are owed something because we struggled. We focus outward on the world rather than inward on how we can adapt to the harsh reality of our existence. Sometimes if you scream loud enough someone will hear you. They will pat you on the back and say, “Man you had it hard.” You may be one of the few who offered assistance— a job, a handout, a contract. Pity might buy you a reluctant friend or mentor or, god forbid, a reluctant girlfriend or boyfriend. But these relationships don’t last because they are not reciprocal. That reluctant friend will eventually grow tired of reassuring you. Your reluctant partner will get tired of you moping about how hard your life is. They will eventually move on. Even family and long-time friends will grow tired of having to support you.

Do not rely on pity as a strategy.

The reality is that most of us out here, despite the few occasions of pity, have to struggle to get anywhere meaningful. You may struggle harder than others, but the sad truth is that few people really care. And they will never care enough to solve your problems for you. Their assistance will never be enough to get you where you want to be. It is you alone who must make it work. By all means, if someone offers help, take it and don’t look back. If someone tips the scales in your direction, seize that opportunity and give it all you have because this occasion is rare, my friend.

Assume that 95% of success will rely solely on your efforts. I leave 5% left over because there are people out there who can guide you. A few people will be interested in your story. They may like you and offer to take you under their wing and teach you or promote you. But they are doing this because you offer something to them. What you offer might be your friendship, conversation, hard work, or good ideas, but there will be no assistance if you bring nothing to the table.  You have to earn this position and you have to earn it despite whatever you might be facing in life. Are you poor? Did you suffer abuse? Did you have to navigate racism or xenophobia to get where you are? Did you suffer sexism or homophobia? Did you suffer from a mental health disorder?

Assume that the world doesn’t care even if it says it does. People use condolence and sympathy to make themselves feel better. Ideals always come second to money, power, and security and you should expect this. Don’t get bitter. Don’t become a misanthrope. People aren’t monsters; they are animals driven by millions of years of evolution.  When the chips are down, when they are tired or scared or sad or lustful they will prioritize their own interests over yours. This is why your therapist doesn’t answer her phone on her off days. This is why your doctor charges thousands of dollars for chemo. There are exceptions, but they are rare.

Wow. Pessimistic much?

Now I know what you are thinking. People aren’t like this! There are good people in the world and people deserve equity and inclusion and we need to protect those who are weaker and yada yada yada. Put down the hammer of social justice for a moment and hear me out. If you are in a position to help someone, to make things fairer, then by all means do it.  But if you are in the trenches like I was, living a life of pain and mediocrity and terror and loneliness then none of that social activism, feel-good nonsense is going to make a difference. I say this because I too once believed that the world owed me something.

At my highly liberal college, I went through all my classes hearing constantly about the horrible state of the world and how we needed to do more for equity and inclusion and mental health activism. I heard my professors constantly talk about the need to solve issues such as poverty, racism, and violence and offer mental health support. For the steep price of admission, I was sold the rosy promise of sympathy and acceptance complete with all the safe spaces and school counselors and sympathetic professors. Finally, people would understand, I thought. Finally, the sick and broken world would change and recognize me for my pain. Opportunity was going to find me after all!

Perhaps I believed this because everyone around me seemed to be living an ideal experience. They went to frat parties and dated and explored all the wonderful things they wanted to study. They argued in class about art and politics and convoluted literary theory and went back to their dorm rooms or frat houses at night while I walked the mile back to my beat-up truck and then drove to work while fretting about whether I was going to afford rent that month. With my loans only covering half my tuition I was never able to pay off the remaining three-thousand-plus dollars in one semester and was prevented from signing up for school again until I could pay off the remaining dues. And still, I was lost in the ideas of the campus, the idea that I was going to be discovered for my hidden talents, that the world was fair and bright and there was opportunity for everyone!

I read my Marxism and became a socialist like everyone else even though a part of me always thought the concepts short-sighted (capitalism isn’t any better. Don’t get me wrong). And I sat back and waited for the world to recognize me. I waited for the opportunities to materialize. I waited all the way until graduation. Someone will see me I used to think. Someone will recognize how much pain I am in. Someone will see how hard I’ve worked and how much I’ve sacrificed. Someone will understand my intellect. Even though I skip classes, the professors will understand because I’m shy and poor and depressed and suffer from OCD. They will see that I deserve a chance!

I had a similar mindset about therapy. I suffer so much, I’d think. My therapist is going to see this and put in the extra work to cure me. He’ll understand if I skip sessions! He’ll understand if I don’t put in the work sometimes!

But none of that happened. If anyone noticed what I had been through they never said anything. No one saw through my sloppily edited essays to recognize the “genius” of my ideas. Even though I made decent grades in school my fear of socializing kept me from pursuing collaborative film projects or networking with professors to pursue graduate studies. Of course, at the time I blamed the school. I blamed the program for letting me down. But it was me. I saw myself as a victim and gave myself an excuse not to try. As a result, my work was mediocre. Mediocre is forgettable and no matter how much you suffer, it will always be forgettable.

I remember an article I read once written by a woman suffering from bipolar disorder. She was in a depressive episode and had convinced her editor to allow her to publish an article from the point of view of that depressive episode, complete with all the chaos and despair of the experience. All I can remember was that the article was embarrassingly bad and that any point she had been trying to make was lost in the sloppiness of her prose. It reminded me of something a writing teacher had said to me once. You can’t push your pain onto people when you write. You have to make them interested. You have to entice them and make them want to go to the dark places with you. If there isn’t anything in it for them, they won’t go there. And they shouldn’t.

You can’t go around pretending that you are special or owed something because you suffered. Everyone suffers and, in their mind, their suffering is the worst suffering anyone has ever experienced. Your social media right? Have you noticed the phenomenon I like to call the “victim Olympics?” This happens a lot in conversations as well. One person posts about their hardship or something they’ve suffered through, and the other person tries to top it. “Well you had depression, well I had chronic pain. Ya well I was abused. Ya well I immigrated from Poland. Ya well I’m autistic…” Of course the interactions are more subtle than this, but I think you get the point. It gets so bad that most social media seems like a farcical joke about the performative nature of victimhood. Don’t embarrass yourself by playing into that. If you have a story that can help people, then by all means share it. But only if it can help people. Do not use a story of hardship as a way to earn any kind of favoritism. The best thing you can do when someone tells you about their hardship is shut up, listen, and then counteract with humor before moving on to other things. By dwelling in pain, by nursing it and reinforcing discussions about it you only perpetuate it and discourage people from pursuing resilience and finding ways to embrace a better life. If you are constantly reminding yourself and others that you are a victim then you are not looking for your strengths, you are not looking for the power that is inside of you. You can get better. You are not broken and by saying you are, you are only holding yourself back.

A final note.

Privilege is nothing to be ashamed of. You had a good upbringing? You went to a decent school and did well in college? That’s fantastic. That’s amazing! I hope you go on to have a great life and give back to society.

We shouldn’t shame people for simply being happy and productive. Isn’t this what we would want for our children? Do we want them to experience the pain we did? Of course not. Why should we be bitter or angry at other people simply for having a good life? I get it. I felt this way too. I talk about being poor in college, about not being able to pay off the tuition. Every day I used to walk by the frat houses where guys played beer pong with their shirts off on the front lawn. I hated those kids. In my mind, they were stupid, privileged, assholes, and every stereotype I heard reinforced this opinion. I hated them because I was struggling and they weren’t. I had to work nights and weekends and sleep in my truck, and they got to play beer pong and go to sleazy parties and hit on girls. But was it right to hate them? Were they bad people?

Later on, I met and spoke with many “privileged” people whose parents had paid for their school, who lived in frat houses or sorority houses and partied hard during college and never had to work. Guess what? They were just people. No better or worse than me. People with their own problems and their own fears. And some of them were rather fine and nice people. If I hadn’t overcome my prejudice, I never would have met them.

Focus on yourself and set aside judgment. All judgment. It is not a tool. It is a sickness that enters your mind and makes you weak. It greatly diminishes your ability to be humble and focused on success. It makes you miserable and diminishes the connections you are able or willing to build.  

Trust me. You’ll be happier if you do.