Survivors Guilt

I know this is a weird title, but I couldn't come up with another term for how I am feeling lately.
I am feeling ok through this pandemic. I see the turmoil, the anxiety, the depression, the uncertainty, and the feelings everyone is putting out there. I can empathize with those feelings. I have felt many of them at various points in these last 4 years.

But today, right now, I'm not feeling them. I feel good. Being at home a lot is not too different for Mark and I except the fact that I don't leave the house to go to school. Mark hasn't handled crowds and noise very well since the stroke. Also, Mark and I received some amazing news a couple of weeks ago. He won his disability case. He will receive full disability. They will pay it back to the day the stroke happened. That is over three years ago!
We didn't tell too many people because it didn't seem right to be telling our good news in the face of all of these horrible things people are going through and feeling. Hence the survivors guilt feeling.

This news for us is life-changing. We have been living on just my salary for 3 years, and we could do it. We had to change a lot of things, but we did it. This extra income that Mark is now going to get will ease the crunch, help us to pay off more debt, and continue with our life goal plans going forward.

So, while other people have been worrying about their jobs, how they are going to make a living, mine just got easier, and I feel like I can't be happy on the outside for fear of hurting someone who is hurting on the inside.

The only advice I can give, is something I have said over and over. Try and find one joy, even if it is little. Take that joy and hold on tight. You might feel like you can only grasp it for a minute and then another wave hits you and rolls you over, but then you can grab another little joy and hold on again. I know doing it that way is very tiring.

When you can't find a joy, then go to your community of people. Have them help you. I know that can be hard as well because you don't want to burden them or you think "they have their own problems, they don't want to hear about mine". If they are your true community, they will help you.

I am in a good place right now, if you need me to be that person, I am here. Know ahead of time that I will acknowledge your feelings, but I'm not going to let you wallow in them for very long. The longer you put off trying to find your joy, the harder it will be to find. I will try to help you find your joy. If I can't, then I will suggest you talk to a professional. Mark had to. I even went along a few times. It certainly helped him and me. I couldn't be his counselor and wife at the same time. Even after this good news, Mark will continue to go. Even though the financial worries he had are fixed, the fact is that his life and how he can live it still changed immensely, and he still needs to talk to someone besides me about that.


So, I feel like I have survivors guilt, but that is not going to stop me from posting the joys I see around me. I may be sticking to what I am seeing unfold around me that is good. Things in nature, the good deeds people are doing for one another, being able to connect with students who feel more comfortable asking me questions online because they are shy in school,  and the families I see spending more time together.

Take a look outside your situation and find your joy. It is worth fighting for.

#Findyourjoy