It wasn't meant to be

Many little pieces of "wisdom" seem (to me) to be kind of selectively blind. Take this old chestnut: "it wasn't meant to be." That's always flung around in reference to something that—for whatever reason—ended. It wasn't meant to be? What do you think it was?? It was as real as anything, for as long as it lasted.

Just because something doesn't last forever, doesn't mean it wasn't worth your while.

And just because something doesn't last forever, doesn't mean it wasn't meant to be. Nothing is meant to be forever. Let's savour what is, while it is. And when it ends—maybe soon, maybe almost never (but never quite 'never')—let's not pretend that the ending negated the experience.

Harassment

Several years ago, I ran into a problem that I'd been fortunate to never experience until then: harassment.

The thing about harassment is you want to argue with the person. Their treatment of you angers you, and they fully give into their own emotions in their interactions with you. You want to sling back the arrows at them, give as good as you get, grab them by the scruff of the neck and rub their ignorant face into the gravelly truth of How To Interact With Humans.

Maybe that would work, for a moment; maybe they'd realize that they neither have nor deserve a monopoly on rights and emotions. But I doubt it.

In fact, maybe they know this. Maybe they feel that by hurling abuse at you, it will provoke you into being extra accommodating or deferential, to prove to them that you are not those offensive things that they describe you as.

Or maybe they don't realize they're being harassing at all.

That knee-jerk simpering reaction is certainly how I responded to the first few incidents. But concede one inch and you know exactly what they'll take before long. Pretty soon you owe them one for some hazy, made-up non-reason, just because you gave them one before.

It's a hell of a mistake to have to learn from, and it doesn't make your inner reaction any easier.

The Ruins of These Thirty Years

They say that if something doesn't matter in ten years, it doesn't matter now. They say this to take the pressure off of present stresses, to bring "perspective."

But there is another perspective, equally true. If it matters now, it will matter more in ten years. It will gather 'matter' like a snowball, and in ten years, twenty years, it will be just as sharp a sting, but with the interest of decades of festering.

They don't tell you that you can spare yourself years of distress and possibly permanent sorrow or harm. Fix the foundations when you can, so you don't find yourself in ruins down the road.

The Clash of Worldviews

Have you ever noticed that people insist on degrading others in order to prop up their own self worth? It seems like a good quality can't stand on its own; it will inevitably be compared with someone else, some Other, in order to paint itself as superior. I was always the loser, growing up. I guess I still am (though at some point you outgrow labels), and I see why: the winners are winners because they need to manufacture losers in order to have their status. They can't be winners without seeing humanity on a spectrum of worth.

How do you speak out against that kind of thing, when it's so ubiquitous, insidious, and any opposition is ridiculed as mere fat-guy defensive action? That's just something ugly people say. If you try to speak up for the downtrodden, suddenly you're the hateful one, the person who's trespassing in the goddess's realm, stepping on her right of free speech. How do you point out hypocrisy?  How do you find your place in a world that rejects the open-mindedness you stand for, and makes you feel uncomfortable everywhere you go — and either ridicules you for your discomfort, or patronizingly tries to help you overcome this "flaw."

Expressing these things is hard. When you're single, it often feels like nobody has your back. [It's not necessarily a Single Person problem, and I don't really consider myself Single in any case—'single' implies 'searching/available'—but it's approximately the position I'm viewing it from.] Society is a non-single entity that doesn't understand or respect your needs, wants, and values, because they're so foreign from its own. This world that superficially preaches "embracing yourself" truly believes that the You that you've embraced is nothing more than self-delusion, than flimsily justifying a lifestyle that nobody would choose. Nobody is really there for you when you need them most. They're there for you when it suits them, and when it doesn't interfere with their real obligations.

And that's kind of the crux: you're not real. You don't inhabit the world the way others do, and therefore you don't have the right to comment on it. At the same time, the world you do inhabit is not permitted to be real, your life and needs and preferences and habits are not permitted to be normal. Your life experience is discounted.

How can you find a place in this world when everything in your life is dismissed as incomplete? How can you be fulfilled when society tells you that you simply are not? No matter how fulfilled you truly feel?