Privacy and Isolation when Life is Tough

Appearing calm; paddling frantically.

By Mary C. Tillotson

When I was in college, a Difficult Thing occurred in my life. I don’t see any reason why the internet at large needs to know the details, in part because it’s personal and in part because plenty of other people were involved, and I don’t think it’s fair to them if I share personal details from their lives. Suffice to say something had been brewing for a while and it came to a head when I found out there would be undeniable physical proof of what had been brewing. I had to figure out how to transition from pretending everything was okay.

What made it more difficult, as you might expect from your own experiences with the Difficult Things in your life, was my belief that nobody else struggled with anything like this. I remember walking to the cafeteria with some friends the day I found out, silent and mentally absent from the conversation. Mostly I was ashamed: all these people with Perfect Families and Perfect Lives hung out with me now, but how could they even relate when they found out about This? Would they assume a bunch of other stuff that wasn’t actually true? Would they start treating me differently?

After dinner, I finally accepted an offer from a friend to talk about it. I cried. She listened. To my surprise, she related: she had a similar Difficult Thing in her life, and so did several other people we knew. It just wasn’t coming to a head in everyone’s life that week like it was in mine.

Have you had that experience? Probably. I think most of us have: we face a Difficult Thing, feel ashamed and isolated because we’re probably the Only One dealing with it, then find out we’re not alone and at least feel better (even if the Difficult Thing isn’t resolved).

This brings me to a question: where is the balance between oversharing and isolating?

Whether it’s an embarrassing medical problem, a misbehaving family member, a marital conflict, an anxiety or depression disorder, sexual abuse, or whatever, sometimes life is just really tough and it seems like there’s no one to talk to. It’s an isolating Catch-22 where no one wants to air their dirty laundry, but we all desperately need someone else to air theirs so we know we’re not alone.

Some find a solution in talking frankly, openly, and publicly about their Difficult Things. This can be helpful, but I don’t think it’s always the best solution. Sometimes a Difficult Thing touches multiple people, and I don’t think it’s fair to say publicly “such-and-such a family member did this horrible thing, and I’m really suffering from it” because, if it’s my uncle (for illustration; all my uncles are actually really good people), maybe my mom or dad doesn’t want you to know that about his or her brother; maybe my aunt doesn’t want you to know that about her husband. Sometimes Difficult Things really are personal; they involve a kind of intimacy that the whole world really doesn’t need to know about. And while one blogger may feel comfortable telling the internet at large about her anxiety disorder, other people with anxiety disorders need to feel that it’s okay not to tell people if they don’t want to.

The solution I think best is friendship. Relationships secured by a deep trust can be safe places to confide Difficult Things.

But it takes time to build these kinds of relationships, and most of us young people end up moving again before we’ve had time to get to know anyone that well. We often live in cities or towns that don’t have very good getting-to-know-people structures; we’re often too busy with work and family to have energy for the historical society or some church group that doesn’t sound all that interesting but might have people who could be really close friends if we kept going for three years, maybe.

I don’t know the answer. What do you think?

Image via Rhymes with Laundry

Waiting for the Morning

By Joy Pullmann

I wanted to post this during Advent, when I was thinking it constantly, but I couldn't. During Advent, I was holding a newborn all day and night, and wishing desperately for some sleep. Any sleep. (I would still like more, but six hours a night broken by nursing is better than four broken by hours of fussing.)

Our second son was born December 5, and quickly revealed he would have the same tummy troubles as his two older siblings. This meant hours and hours a day of fussy sleep, where baby sleeps for five minutes in between squirms while mom and dad can't because he's squirming every five minutes. So I spent hours staring bleary-eyed out our bedroom window, holding a wiggly baby and waiting for dawn. I'd repeatedly check the time not to see how long baby had slept but to see how long it was until it was finally day and I didn't have to pretend I might get some sleep any more.

Advent, like Lent before Easter, is a time of sober reflection and preparation. New year resolutions and post-holiday housecleaning faintly resemble these two religious seasons. They are supposed to remind Christians that our eternal home is not this world, and that we await Christ's final return, when suffering will, at last, end.

Boy, did I feel that in my sleep-bereft state. A severe lack of sleep has always made me very melancholy. In college I used to cry every Friday night simply because I was so exhausted by the end of the week. This seems like a good setup for sober reflection, but it was hard to reflect on anything except how much I wanted to lie down.

This rotten experience did, however, reveal to me more about the reality of what it means to wait for a perfect eternity. I typically like this world. I have a good life. We're not poor, hungry, persecuted, or isolated. So why would I look forward to the end of it? Why bother with change when the present isn't that bad?

But when your newborn child is suffering, and so are you, this world gets a lot less attractive. It made me yearn, once again, for suffering to end. Some day, it will.

Image by Jan de Graaf, with no changes.