Down These Meme Streets

Boy, I sure hope I never see that guy again.

This dude was so miserable and unhappy. Forever the victim, he couldn’t wait to tell you how he’d been wronged. The guy had a black belt in self-pity and a PhD in despair.

It took a great deal of work, but I managed to push this fellow out of my life, and I don't want him coming back.

Now this man wasn’t a former coworker, a neighbor, or a distant relative.

No, I’m sorry to that his person was me.

Specifically, I’m talking about the man I used to be years ago back when I was trouble with both my health and my career.

I had gone through a bout of mononucleosis back in the Eighties and it developed into Epstein-Barr syndrome, where the mono-like symptoms would flare up repeatedly.

People have some terrible times with this affliction; they’ve been forced to quit their jobs and severely curtail their lives.

My condition was bad, but it paled in comparison to what these poor folks were suffering through. But nevertheless, I was convinced I had bad luck and that the fates were conspiring against me to ruin my life.

When I moved out of the city to work at a small daily newspaper, I was so unhappy due to my ongoing health problems and the lousy treatment I was getting from management that I shifted into full victim mentality.

“I hate every inch of my life,” I routinely declared to myself—or anyone who would listen.

One night I recall hanging out in the paper’s parking lot and wishing a giant meteor would come streaking out of the sky and blow the building to pieces.

There was all this wishing and complaining, but I was never acting.

Pain Points

I wasn’t sending out resumes, making calls to other companies, or just up and quitting and taking off for California like I had been threatening to do since my junior year of college—and something I have yet to do.

No, I just waited on Hailey’s Comet evil twin and bitched morning, noon and night. I call that part of me The Incredible Sulk.

And yet I would seriously wonder why I wasn’t getting anywhere, never realizing that you don't attract what you want--you attract what you project.

Give off negative vibes and you’re won't be singing "Happy Days are Here Again" anytime soon.

I’ve been subscribing to a series of positive aspirations pages on Instagram for quite a while now. I get all these sayings and ditties, some of which may be a bit facile, but it’s better than some of the doomsday crap I tell myself far too often.

One such meme feature questions inspired by the Swiss psychotherapist Car Jung. They all resonated with me, but one of them really spoke to me.

Who are you without your pain?

The post noted that we cling to wounds, using such soul-killing phrases as “I’m unwanted,” “I’m misunderstood,” or “I’m alone.”

But what we do if we didn’t have that pain? Sometimes freedom can be scarier than suffering.

“I am not what happened to me,” Jung said. “I am what I choose to become.”

He believed that while past experiences and circumstances shape us, we are not defined by them but by the choices we make in response to them.

Of course, it’s not smart to rely solely on social media memes to get through life.

But they’re part of my mental health toolbox and I want to keep them handy in case the Incredible Sulk decides to stage a comeback.