My Slice of the Pie

I’m working on a new theory about the source of my misery.  It seems to me that suffering is like a giant pie that gets cut into evenly sized slices and served up to everyone who has ever lived.  Some people get their entire slice right at the beginning of their lives (abandoned babies, abused children) and then the rest of their time here is relatively easy.  Some folks are given little crumbs to nibble on throughout their entire lives- no unbearable suffering, but always a sense that the other shoe is about to drop when things are going smoothly.  Some people, like my father, live good lives, marry the right person, enjoy health, family, love and intimacy and then WHAM!! out of the blue, they get handed their full serving of suffering at the end of their lives, trial after trial, blow after blow until they take their last breath.

I’ve decided that I am the guest at the party who is given my suffering in the little finger foods.  I am never quite so miserable that I leave the party altogether, but neither am I really having a good time.  I don’t allow myself to relax and be fully present at the event, because I know that misery is looking for me and so I withdraw to a corner to make myself harder to find.

For reasons I’ve never been able to understand, I concluded early in life that there was something about me that made me hard to love.  I’ve prayed for insight into that conclusion... I’ve even considered hypnosis.  My husband once called me a suicide bomber, a saboteur, meaning that I purposefully undermined my own chances of happiness by blowing up what was good in my life.  If there is truth in that, then all my hours of therapy have not helped me to understand why.  I don’t blow up great careers.  I don’t blow up friendships, most of which are between 10 and 40 years standing. I don’t blow up relationships with family.  It’s only my relationships with men that get blown up.

I am beginning to believe that my slice of the suffering pie comes in the form of a conviction that I am unlovable and therefore cannot expect a man to grow old with me.  God knows I have tested that theory enough times.  Perhaps in the next life, God will explain to me why He chose this very specific type of suffering for me... why I was denied the experience of having a bunch of babies with a man who videotaped our every Christmas, and baptism and birthday party, and then later, much later, read storybooks to our grandchildren.  The thing is that for some people that would be no great sacrifice.  I have friends who are happily single, friends who are married but happily childless.  But this was my heart’s desire- to have what my parents had, to have what my sister has: children and a man to love me all my days.  Why on earth would I blow that up?  Why on earth would God not want me to have that? Why on earth would my husband not stick around long enough to prove me wrong?