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

“Why do your cats like me so much?” “Because you’re allergic. They are the ultimate anxious avoidant boyfriend. You move away and they get closer. Try to pet one and they’ll . . .”—and here my friend affected the most ridiculous Irish accent—“take your bleedin’ hand off, they will.”

People who hadn’t grown up with chaos didn’t understand you couldn’t reject any possibilities to restore stability. Those people had spouses, parents, safety nets.

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?”

In the aged mirror I said, “Stop wallowing.” Which was not the affirmation of this generation, but I came from the bootstrap, get your head out of your ass generation. Push those nerves down, ask for nothing, get to work were our anthems.

The trick was to listen, support, and do no problem-solving until a solid problem was defined. Emotions were not to be solved.

I’m going to give up people pleasing if that’s okay with everyone.

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. I’d done it for years, and it had always worked for me.

Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Women learn to be pleasing—often their lives and livelihoods depend on it.

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?