How to continue living when you’ve failed to get your way on something that matters so incredibly much that without it, life is not worth living.
Something so incredibly important that in my opinion, it is not a matter of merely getting one’s way at all, but a matter of whether or not one’s fundamental rights are respected.
There are no words adequate to the task of fully conveying how upset the failure to get my way, the failure of others to respect my fundamental rights, has made me.
There are no words capable of fully conveying the pain, the anguish, the suffering that I have endured.
How to continue living when the topic on which I’ve been defeated is so crucially important to my life, to my happiness, to my well-being, that all other topics are trifles in comparison, and putting time and energy into them seems equivalent to fretting about the arrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic.
Conventional wisdom says that one shouldn’t dwell on things over which one has no control, that one should instead direct one’s focus and energy towards the things that one can control.
But how can it be wise, or sensible, or worthwhile, to direct my focus and energy towards the things that don’t matter, and away from the things that do?
How to continue living when the defeat is so complete, so thorough, that it is difficult if not impossible to find a silver lining, to find any reason for hope, to find any way of putting a positive spin on the situation?
How to continue living in a society that is collectively responsible for inflicting this horrific defeat on me, for taking away the thing that I need in order to have a life that is worth living?
How to enjoy anything when every company, every institution, every organization, every governmental and non-governmental entity, is to some extent complicit in this atrocity, in this violation of my rights?
How to coexist with a loss that involves a subject of such crucial importance to me, a loss that is so complete as to allow no room for hope, a loss that was inflicted on purpose?
These are just a few of the thoughts swirling around my head today.
These are the questions with which I’ve wrestled for over three years, and with which I must continue to wrestle.
At the moment, I don’t have answers. Only questions.