Adulting: Battling Self-Pity

Last week has been a very trying week for the entire family. Beginning the week visiting the funeral home for a dear friend to experiencing many other notable people in my life leaving this earth or family members close to them leaving this earth. Regardless, I was sulking in self-pity over the simplest of things for no reason at all. As November is a great month to be thankful, of which I have many things to be thankful for. I wanted those close to me to draw attention to me and feel bad for me and I wanted to feel pity on myself because things don’t go to my plan.

Many things in our life can happen out of control. But what I was drawing anxiety and anger on the day before I was doing this activity was unhealthy.The effects COVID was doing last week wern’t helping because the reality was setting in that people were tired. Regardless, these negative thoughts that I was sulking were minimal. The time that I would only have to be in actual worry was minimal and if I did what I knew I needed to do I would most likely be fine. 

I wanted people to feel bad for me so I could validate that I was a problem, when in fact nothing was wrong. I was creating all this mess of sorts and in reality the anxiety the day before was really pointless because it wasn’t all that bad. Yet, I wanted people to justify a reason to feel sorry for myself. It is like a sick kind of relationship that you really know someone that when you meet up with them you make a snarky statement about them because you want them to feel bad and join the pity party train with you because you want company on your misery tour,

After some text conversation that did not turn out the way I wanted and after indeed making some snarky comments throughout the day and not getting the result I wanted to hear, I knew that the change had to come within me. I cannot spend the rest of my life having pity on myself because many of the things that I cannot control can be easily manageable using the skills I continue to learn even into my thirties. 

Battling that self-pity means to not have a reason to sulk means that if it means I have to fight my anxiety demons to see progress and have an end result of being satisfied, then I must fight it. That is easier said than done. Doing new things make me especially anxious because I garner a great deal of fear. However, mamy of the things I learned to do once I have done them have loved them and were not failures. If I can remember the many things I felt uncomfortable doing before doing a new thing, It might help me see that many things are possible if I combat that fear.

Regardless, because I can not do what I ideally want doesn’t give me an excuse to sulk in self-pity and it certainly doesn’t give merit to make those that do their darndest to see that I have a decent life feel horrible about themselves. I need to define my own life and while I know I need to work on improving more things that will help me one day be independent, I know the pity will become minimal. When I imagine these things, the smile on my face cannot be wiped off. I simply cannot sulk about everything that is wrong in my life. I have fought through so much and especially a lot within the past two years to finally be on the mend to see some light at the end of the tunnel that has seemed so endless.

I’ve always been told that life is what you make it. I could complain about the things that are wrong in my life and have the ominous pity party. Then I think about the things others such as I are not privileged to have and it doesn’t mean that I am better than anyone else, it just means that I need to count my blessings and be thankful for the opportunities that are provided in my life and not let them get away by sulking about everything that is wrong in my life.