Getting used to it

[Tortured_empath]

In my years of hardship and suicidal ideation I've learned that humans have an impressive ability to get used to situations, predicaments and such. I mean this in a good way.

New, hard ways and modes of living seem insurmountable when you first experience them. I thought I could never live with a permanent, life changing injury. When I became homeless I thought I was toast.

But as experiences layer, routines develop and seasons change, your spirit gets calloused (again, in a good way), and that's when the ability to grow from your situation appears. Like a flower out of concrete.

I write this cause I once again find myself in a new situation, I fear I won't overcome. But what gives me hope is that I can learn to work with it as much as against it. And I know there are other people on this forum who've done the same.

 

[timf]

In the book "King Rat" James Clavell describes in fiction what he experienced in real life, being a prisoner of the Japanese in WWII. It captures what you described of adaptation. I had a friend who had been a pilot for Air Viet Nam. He told me that as a refugee in Honk Kong he and his fellow pilots knew that they would not be pilots anymore so he went through bar tender school and then worked his way through electronics school.

I knew an 18 year old boy from a wealthy family whose parents were getting a divorce. He was terrified by the prospect that no one would take care of him. It was sad that at 18 he had no idea of how to live life. I saw it as a type of child abuse. He was starting further behind others of his age, but would have to acquire the skills to build a life for himself.

Your testimony is an encouragement to all who have to deal with difficulty