You know, Iāve been thinking a lot recently about the sort of tumblrina who insists that they have it worse than everyone else, that everyone needs to care about them specifically. The reason Iāve been thinking about this is because it triggers my feelings of inadequacy, feeling like nothing thatās happened to me is deserving of the same consideration.
Then I realized that attitude comes from the same place. Itās a need for people to take your problems seriously. I was raised by a woman who taught me that the majority of people had worse problems than me, and I needed to be endlessly understanding and compassionate to that, at the expense of my own needs; she even downplayed my experience of rape. Iām not very good at getting out of this mindset; I feel that nothing has happened to me thatās bad enough to warrant being treated like a human. If someone has been invalidated, and suffered, and they donāt have that mindset that everything that happens to everyone else must be worse, no wonder they would insist that their experience is the worst thing in the world.
Now it becomes harder to work out what to say to them. I donāt want to be another person saying that what happened isnāt as bad as they think it is, because to someone who feels the way that I do, and the way that I imagine they do, that is the worst thing you can be told. Itās not true either. What happened to them is almost certainly far worse than anyone in their life acknowledged.
Perhaps the best thing to say is that comparison wonāt save us. Itās just going to hurt us more, but never enough to satisfy the people who told us we werenāt deserving of care. The world is more complicated than a near hierarchy of badness. Thatās hard to hear if youāve based as much of your identity on it as I have, but itās true. If you yourself have been invalidated, told your experience wasnāt as bad, donāt do that to someone else, especially if you think youāre right. I want to try to love other people more than I hate myself and my situation. I hope someday I will be able to treat those who have suffered how I have with compassion instead of jealousy and anger. I hope that for you as well.
