Personal Woes and Advice 2

[The Succubus]

Hm. I'd like to voice an enraged scream for assistance.

Seriously, though: that does seem to be what it takes. This summer I fell down a steep incline and broke my collarbone. It was painful and debilitating. I missed five months of work, which was depressing. And worse: I live alone. Since I could not drive a car, I was fairly isolated and lonely. And although I'd moved across country to be closer to my family, none of them seemed to be able to find the time to help me out.

Now I'm back at work and trying to get my life back together. And my family is fussing at me for not following through on certain tasks during the five months I had a wing down. Are you *kidding* me? I had my arm in a sling! I was in pain!

I feel like I help others and the favor never gets returned. And I feel that no one believes how badly I was hurt, possibly because I've never been hurt that bad before. Or possibly because, frankly, people are being a little selfish.

It makes me feel tired and disrespected and undervalued.

I am a sad monkey.

.

*hugs tightly*

As someone that has benefited from both your wisdom and your support when I was feeling at my lowest, I could never thank you enough for that. You have been a wonderfully positive influence on my life and an awesome friend.

You've always struck me as being a very strong and determined person, even if you're not quite feeling it at the moment. The problem is that that kind of thing can backfire on you, as it has with your folks. Because you've always seemed calm and centred, your family may be thinking that there's nothing wrong and as such, they feel they can treat you like this. After all, it was very selfish of you to spend several months in excruciating pain - time off sick is the same thing as being on a relaxing holiday, right?

I'm afraid I don't really have much in the way of useful advice for you m'dear but I can give you a little encouragement. I know for a fact that I'm not the only Playgrounder you've been there for when they've been down - just flicking through the previous P:WA tells me that much. You bring light and warmth into the lives of others and I know these forums would not be the same without you.

I've been thinking a lot about opportunity cost. I'm starting to think I'm going to waste the rest of my life making up for my mistakes.

It all starts with one mistake. You try to make up for that mistake and then you make another one. So you try to make up for that one and you make another mistake. This goes on and on until you're gone, when it would have been better to just NOT make the mistake in the first place. Then you could go on and make the right choices again and again and have a happy fulfilling life, instead of one like mine, where it's just bad decision after bad decision hobbled out of the gate by my mental disorder.

You've just discovered the thing that humans do better than any other creature in the cosmos: making mistakes.

The thing is, although we often bounce around concepts like karma, cosmic justice and the idea of some final post-mortem exam totting up how well we did in life....for myself, I don't believe life works that way. The closest I get to that sort of thing is a belief that life has a rather odd and sadistically vicious sense of humour. The car breaks down in *just* that spot, the post office goes on strike on *just* that day you send off an important letter...it's as though life is a D&D game and the DM has a Fumble table drawn up in [insert negative afterlife of your choice].

It's tempting to try and go back to fix things you've done wrong. If I ever invented a machine that allowed humans to do that, I'd be a trillionaire in a week. Sadly, such a machine will be forever beyond the reach of humans or anyone else - a society that never made mistakes would be a horribly dull place to live. Because every once in a while, a mistake can be a positive thing. Penicillin was discovered by accident, or to put it another way, through a mistake.

Of course, making a scientific mistake is one thing, making a personal mistake is another. You may have said or done something to someone that you feel bad about, or they feel hurt because of your actions. Although we don't have a machine that can fix the past, we do have the next best thing:

"Sorry."

It won't fix the world but it isn't meant to. It's just a word we have to say "I regret what I did and I will do my best not to do it again". Saying the word sorry is easy - you just send breath past the vocal chords and it comes out of the mouth. Sincerely *meaning* it is a whole other kettle of fish. The thing here is that the mistake you've made is one that you fear you're going to make again, despite this.

Accept it.

You're trying to come up with a contingency plan to try and repair whatever damage is done by the mistake but you're doing so while frazzled with worry and guilt. If this truly is beyond you to fix, admit it and give yourself a sense of peace. "I am sorry that I did XYZ, I will try my hardest not to make the mistake again but if I do, please forgive me."