There's No Coming Back from This

by Ann Garvin

To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting. —e. e. cummings

“Mental illness isn’t personal, it’s illness.” Going on to say, “You wouldn’t take another person’s diabetes as a slight against you, would you?”

The blame ball, in the game of life, rolled downhill and, as often as not, hit the victim.

You know, if you stood up for yourself like you do for everyone else, maybe I could respect you. I did put others first. I’d long known that if you focus on other people, you don’t have to figure out what you want. If you never ask anything for yourself, you’ll never discover who cares or, for that matter, doesn’t care.

There was so much to learn, and it occurred to me that the largest life lesson of all had to be answering the question of how much to give, how much to keep. How much do you matter versus how much do others count when trying to be a mother, friend, or good person?