OK, I have a Thing To Say: on whether "it" can be "worth it," and general "moral" responsibility

OK so I finished that Adlerian-psychology book and started in on the Daniel Howell book and I need to stop and capture (YELL ACTUALLY BECAUSE I'M VERY ANGRY) this set of thoughts which has been coalescing for twenty years.

People are often saying "I'm so glad I didn't kill myself, it was all worth it because life is good now" and I just fundamentally object to the "it will all be worth it, just stick with it" platitudes as regards "I had a horribly hard and hurtful life but now it's OK so all that horrible stuff must have been OK too because it was Part Of My Journey(TM)."

FABULOUS if you feel better now -- yay you!, big fan!, love you lots!, I will honestly cheer and be happy for you in real time if we are interacting <3!

But don't give the bad moral actors any credit.  Their evil is not yours and there is NO moral requirement for you to accept ANY of it.

"I'm so glad I didn't kill myself"? Yay <3!  "All the shit was worth it?" Toxic toxic toxic.

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1) Just to get this out of the way, although most of my readers will have read this item once or twice from me before:  For some people (most people actually) life literally never "gets better."  Look at history and there are lots of people, probably actually the vast, vast majority of people, for whom life was shit and then they died.  Moments of happiness, small joys, but it never "got better."  People might find spiritual enlightenment or some other version of peace, people might find love, but most people in all of human history have in very practical terms had very, very hard lives, and those lives generally only got (and get) harder and more painful as humans age.

"It got better" isn't a thing for most people, most places, most times.

It isn't *actually* a thing in modern America for most people -- that whole "it's probably going to get significantly better" thing is a MYTH and most Americans self-medicate one way or another because the "truth" (lies) we are told about "how to acheive happiness" don't match reality but we are all working hard to do the "right" things and still everything hurts and therefore there is (quite logically if one accepts the baseline lies) no actual, workable answer, and deadening (or finding ways to otherwise deny) the pain is the best solution for psychological survival in a system designed both to inflict pain and prevent access to real remedies.

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2) But my actual Thing I Have to Say is that if someday my life actually manages to do this magical turnaround thing that some people insist on telling me it "will" do (if I just [fill in their preferred blank]), and someone tries to rejoice with me by implying or asking, See, wasn't it all worth it?  ...

Let's think big and say, on a talk show.

Let's think little and say, over quiet tea in a stable-seeming living situation.

THE ANSWER IS NO.

NO.  NONE OF THIS SHIT WAS "WORTH IT."

PEOPLE BEING CRUEL INDIVIDUALLY WAS NOT "WORTH IT."

PEOPLE ACCEPTING CRUEL EXISTING TEACHINGS AND SYSTEMS THAT HURT ME AND OTHER PEOPLE WAS NOT "WORTH IT."

I WILL NEVER, EVER BE IN ANY WAY GRATEFUL FOR, OR ACCEPTING OF, PEOPLE HAVING BEEN SHITTY.

NOT TO ME, NOR TO ANYONE ELSE.  FUCK THAT.

AND

ALSO:

!!!!!

I have quite a lot of friends and some relatives who believe (more or less literally depending on the person) in each of us literally having chosen, before birth, this specific life we each are living.

I am even willing to give y'all that (I don't find that in practical moral terms it makes a difference for me, so I don't actually care).

But let's play that game and look at the logic of most of the 'self help''ish books, videos, and teachers out there, regarding the idea that "you chose this life."

If I showed up in this life AND PEOPLE TREATED ME WITH CRUELTY

there is NOT ACTUALLY AN INHERENT, LOGICAL REASON TO ASSERT THAT I 

--> "ASKED FOR" THAT, 

--> "DESERVED" THAT, NOR 

--> "NEEDED TO LEARN SOMETHING FROM" THAT.

I categorically refuse that.  I refuse all of it.  People being shitty is ON THEM.

FULL.

FUCKING.

STOP.

I *can* accept that I showed up -- that we each showed up -- offering an open heart so that the people we came in contact with could choose to learn to be better humans, so that they could choose love, so that they could learn to *see* and to *care* better.

If the humans we showed up "for" (or nearby, anyhow) didn't *do* that, THAT IS ON THEM.

NO HUMAN ASKED TO BE BORN INTO CRUELTY.

ZERO.

I DON'T BELIEVE THAT HAPPENS.

PERIOD.

I do NOT accept that ANY being asks, at ANY level, to be abused.

And every "teacher" who has every told any "student" that that was true?  Is part of the deep structure that holds the lies and the abuse in place.

NO.

So fuck that whole "it was all worth it" idea.

And also all versions of "you are morally required to be grateful for what you receive in this life."

NO.

IF SOMEONE CHOOSES TO BE SHITTY, THAT IS NOT MY PROBLEM.  IT'S NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY.  IT'S NOT MY FAULT.

EVEN IF I, REAL-TIME, *ACTUALLY* ASKED SOMEONE TO BE SHITTY?

IT 

WOULD 

--> STILL <--

BE 

--> THEIR <--

MORAL 

CHOICE 

TO DO SO.

I ABSOLUTELY REFUSE TO BELIEVE *I* "NEEDED" TO "LEARN" SOMETHING THAT REQUIRED ANY OTHER PERSON TO BE HORRIBLE.

THIS SHIT RIGHT NOW (which -- current version -- is due to a really unfortunate-for-me confluence of structural inequities as opposed to people being individually nasty, so ... an improvement, and a testament to how much work I have *successfully* done to stop being buried in mean people's active individual shitstorms)

ALL THE TIMES PEOPLE CHOSE TO HURT ME OR CHOSE NOT TO STEP UP WHEN I WAS A KID

ALL THE TIMES PEOPLE CHOSE TO HURT ME OR CHOSE NOT TO STEP UP WHEN I WAS A TEEN

ALL THE TIMES PEOPLE CHOSE TO HURT ME OR CHOSE NOT TO STEP UP WHEN I WAS A YOUNG ADULT

NONE OF IT

NOT ANY OF IT

WAS EVER, IS EVER, NOR WILL IT EVER "HAVE BEEN, LOOKING BACK"

"WORTH IT."

That is all bullshit and I will *not* accept moral responsibility on any level for other people choosing fear in their actions instead of courage/love.  I will only take moral responsibility for the times I choose fear in *my* actions instead of courage/love.

How badly I've been treated was not something I asked for.  It's not something I believe ANY of us asked for, not even as Soul-Seeds in the Infinite Glowing Wisdom Space or whatever the current in-fashion words are.  If you offered to trust that people would love and care for you --  maybe, even, you did it as a generous gift of hope and love *to/for those people* -- if they didn't step up and be good (or at least decent) humans, that is *NOT YOUR FAULT.*

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I don't believe darkness is required to see the light.  I have never believed that, and I've never seen anything in my life experience that actually supports that, but I have seen the assertion used in real time by a lot of people to "justify" their dark spaces that are *actively hurting other people* [side rant here redacted].

There is a central core of reality -- somehow -- of truth and love, and the further away things are from it, the less true they are; there doesn't need to be "another side" to that.  There *isn't* "another side" of that.  We mentally construct it because we fear facing the full light of love, and would like to believe we are choosing "something" rather than just running away in fear.

"Balance" as a "moral value" requires us to accept both mediocrity and *evil.*

Nope nope nope'ity nope.

NO.

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And lest the "good Christians" in the crowd think you are getting off easy because I have particular beef with the new age'y post-modern Western-Civ versions of reincarnation-teaching, most of that "if shit happened to you it must be your fault somehow" teaching is definitely firmly in the "theological" foundations of nearly all "Christian" denominations in America and without exception *is the foundation* of every major cultural structure in our nation, because it was part of the "Christian" "theology" that was in vogue among the elites in the 1700s.

I've heard "it will all be worth it" from WAY more Christian-heritage or actively Christian people than from my pagan, new age, or secularist friends.

"It will all be worth it" is not a statement of hope.  It's a statement designed to bury the reality of structural inequalities in our society that literally guarantee that for most people it will never "all have been worth it."  It's a statement designed to suppress conversations around difficult but necessary changes.

Maybe we get to go to Heaven at the end of life.  But there is no logical requirement to experience pain to get to Heaven, and experiencing pain does not make a person more holy or worthy or any other thing that would theologically justify "it will all be worth it."

There is only a requirement to *love.*

The ONLY requirement, is to love.

A human succeeds or fails *as a human* according to whether and how strongly they chose *love.*  How much they chose to grow towards love, and matured towards love, and gave love, and accepted love.

(Real love.  Not just anything people find convenient to label "love" so they can abuse others, but with added-bonus, extra-effective gaslighting.)

Hurting people because we can't be bothered to face our own pain and fears is never, ever justified.  It's understandable.  It's forgivable, for those with a will to forgive.  But it's never justified.  And nothing about the results will be "worth it" that wouldn't have been better and more "worth it" if more loving and honest choices had been made in the first place.

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Anyhow I have a lot of feelings about this.

The last few years I'm just *really, spectacularly* tired of people telling me 

--> "well I'm glad you see *your* responsibility for *your* situation" (that was one of the most WTF responses I've ever gotten tbh -- probably because I rarely talk to people as deeply Americanized as that person was), or 

--> "it will all be worth it someday just hold on," or 

--> "yes it's a hard life but we each asked for what we got," 

or a million other versions of 

--> "when people are horrible it's probably at least partly if not wholly your own fault and also we must avoid having honest conversations about how much of this pain is structurally designed into society and actually entirely unnecessary if people in general weren't systematically beaten into being terrified of radical love."

The choices I made in my life should, in any *actually rationally healthy* society, not have ended up with me being housing insecure and food insecure and my children only seeing me every month or two simply because of my economic hardship (and not because anyone doesn't want to see each other, or they live far away, or ... ).

My situation is a reason to reevaluate anything you think is "good" or "working" about American structures, not a reason to hope for a fairy godmother or a winning lottery ticket so I can "be happy and well" and everyone can again conveniently repress how stupidly shitty our whole social assumptions-set is because somehow -- magically -- "it all turned out alright."

(I wouldn't say no to a winning lottery ticket, don't get me wrong.  But the level of bullshit is still the level of bullshit.  The value of the next moment does not change the value of this moment.  And anyhow I'd probably stay poor because I'd rather see as many immediate broad scale positive social changes as possible with the hope of preventing more of my situation, rather than 'rescuing' one of me, so after paying off debts and putting just enough away to reasonably prevent being a further drain on my safety nets I'd be spending/ giving away all the money -- carefully -- anyhow.)

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There is probably more but that is enough for now.

Oct 20 2013 Fb Status: on being suicidal

My friend ~N posted this:
http://mattfraction.com/post/63999786236/sorry-to-put-this-on-you-but-i-have-an-honest-question

I responded there:

• I didn't notice this was Matt Fraction until the little subscribey-thing at the end. I saw him live at W00tst0ck ... that experience and this read are adding really interesting color to each other.
• I'd forgotten how universally it sucked to be a nerd when we were growing up : P : (.
• (Long comment just turned into my own Fb post. Sharing this.)

And then I FbShared the link:
My comments/reactions follow, in the Comments.
Thank you, ~N.

And here is my story, bulletted as I entered it into my own comment-string:

• Firstly, I saw this guy live on stage doing what I suppose was kind of a secular testimonial during this amazing cultural nexus called "w00tst0ck" ... he is clearly valued by a huge number of people. Although I have never gone to find his blog before, the person who asked this question clearly expects the straight shit from him, and I am a *giant* fan of that.
• And then on a personal scale, I feel like this calls out my testimonial as well. Whenever I was what I call "actually suicidal" (actively on the edge of killing myself, as opposed to "just" feeling like I couldn't go on), whatever part of my psyche was like "oh, crap, NO!" about the overall 'desire' to be dead-and-gone pushed to find and lock onto something singular-but-significant -- in my case I needed to make myself responsible to someone outside my head ... just one person, but they needed to not only care about me but be daily in my life right then. Like, I knew they would be someone who would walk in the room and be both wrecked and incredibly angry that I had given up.
  
  There are only two periods, in my long walk with severe depression (ages 12 to 30-something, I suppose, although I wangled a couple of good years in my early 20s), when I was "actually suicidal" -- but I was "suicidal" (thoughts of ending it all, "how can I go on?," etc.) a LOT. All of high school, for sure.

  
  
• In college my one-thing was calling my college-bestie [C]. In true [C] style, her response was along the lines of "WHAT THE FUCK?!?" -- but she held me accountable ;).
  
  When my ex left, I stayed alive for the baby inside, and then for the helpless nursing baby, and then for the kids whose dad wasn't really ready to be a single dad, much less a single dad with four wrecked children because Mommy was dead. Luckily/blessedly, the weight of my incapacitating depression lessened slightly more slowly than my ex's capabilities as a parent, because if at any point during that long upward trek I had perceived that he could handle the kids sans Mommy, I was wayyyyy too close to the edge to guarantee I'd still be here.
  
  There are so many what ifs.
  
  If I had believed in the choice of abortion (really believed, personally, not as a theoretical), I can tell you right off John probably wouldn't have been born ... and in a period when I literally believed, with all my injured heart, that I was worthless, but I couldn't argue that the little person inside would agree, his life provided a frame of reference that did not allow me to kill myself.
  
  If ex had gotten his gun(s) before he left the house -- I actually don't know whether he did, because i told him that if he did, he *had to* NOT tell me, because I knew I was too close ... would I have found some one thing to hold me back, even with a handgun around? I don't know.

  
  
• After ex had been gone a while, I realized I didn't remember what it felt like to be happy ... that I hadn't laughed, literally I think, in over two years.
  
  It was about a year later, well after I had stopped being "actually suicidal" (although still pretty frikkin' overwhlemed and tired) that something happened (I don't remember what) and I realized I felt "happiness" ... oh. my. God.

  
  
• What a revelation.

  
  
• I still almost never really laughed. In fact, it's only recently (6+ years after ex left) that I would really say I laugh (beyond a chortle) regularly.

  
  
• But life has been so worth living.

  Like · 2 (CWF, BH)

  
  
• So thank you to everyone who is a part of my life :).

And then some responses from my awesome community :) ... 

• [CWF:] More happy hugs in hallway on Monday, glad you are part of my parenting support circle and more!

  Like · 2 (IV, me)
• [JC:] I am stunned speechless and in tears at the depth and courage of what you are sharing here, Kirsten. Thank you for touching me deeply, and for teaching me so much. Love to you.

  Like · 2 (IV, me)
• [me:] :). thanks, [CWF] :).

  Like
• [me:] (and, I am about to leave my computer for the day, so NO WORRIES ANYONE ;) if I don't reply for a long time!)

  Like · 1 (~N)
• [me:] Wow, Fb, way to fail to update : P (glad I hit refresh just in case!) ... and: thank you, [JC] :). Not enough people in my life know that which was so hidden. I am glad this opportunity came up to share, and that "my peeps" value real connection and emotional safety enough that I (feel like I) can share this.

  Like · 1 (IV)

(the end, as of Oct 21)
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