Just for the record, other than a rather circus-like ability to lift heavy things, I am not a strong person.
Lately, life has been a litany of hearing "you are so strong" - "no, no, I am not!"
I walk the kids the mile to school, and I suspend my disbelief, to check for fairies under leaves and to talk about what color the door on our gypsy wagon should be - the world around us our kaleidoscope color swatch. The dog tugs at her leash to chase squirrels; we find 'treasures' street-side; today an Arabic dictionary and old toothbrush holder; and we talk about why the stars twinkle.
That is not strength. Seriously, what else is there to do?
My husband lost his mind (in an agonizing and costly labyrinth of mental illness) and then disappeared very suddenly leaving me a sole supporter and single parent to traumatized little girls; I was bed-ridden with a terrible spine injury; my one daughter left remission and has a currently untreatable (sans a liver transplant) form of Hepatitis, courtesy of her birth mom; and my other kid (already definitively special needs) has something that acts and looks like cancer, as yet to be diagnosed, due to said other special needs making testing close to impossible.
Its life lived like a trauma version of an add-a-pearl necklace.
These things don't make me strong. The fact that I am still here does not make me strong. Its a misnomer that tragedy engenders strength.
Tragedy- just is.
Last night I debated the nature of suffering. I don't believe there to be a hierarchy to pain. Suffering is suffering - the source does not actually matter other than what recourse or action is to be taken.
My suffering not greater than any other. Sick children are not a tragedy trump card and I refuse to play that hand. I am not stronger nor nobler than anyone else. I merely am.
No comments:
Post a Comment