This is what it has come down to. A choice must be made that I alone have to make. I must choose to accept that which I cannot change. You have probably heard some version of this:

• You can only control yourself.
• Only you can control your thoughts and actions.
• Don’t stress over things you have no control over.

What exactly am I talking about?

In this scenario I am focusing on 2 huge sources of disappointment and frustration in my life.

• Wanting others to understand my experience.
• Wanting others to help me in a certain way.

I don’t feel like these are big asks. If a person cares about me, my wellbeing – if they love me – then why would they not want to understand what I am going through or to help me in a helpful way? Am I wrong? I would want to do those 2 things for someone else.

After suffering daily in the POMM (Prison of My Mind) for weeks and months, perhaps years – this is what it has come down to.

No matter how hard I try to explain my experience, how detailed, how carefully worded – no one seems to fully understand.

No matter how obvious I think my suffering looks on the surface, some people are just not going to see it and not help me the way I need to be helped.

Let’s ask our studio audience

1. If you had a friend or family member that you knew was clinically depressed, had lost their job and home, and has been struggling for months:
   Wouldn’t you check on them more often than never?
2. If you saw them sitting alone eating a meal, with their head down – looking like they had just received the worst news possible:
   Wouldn’t you ask them if they were okay?
3. If this was your parent we are talking about, and they live in another state and you know they are suffering; where if they were to hear your voice each week then much of this may have been avoided:
   Why would you not call them?

Radical Acceptance

Radical Acceptance is a concept from Dialectical Behavior Therapy where a person is supposed to fully accept their reality as it is, without judgement or resistance, even when it is painful or difficult to do so.

So now you are caught up. Here I am, trying to convince myself to radically accept that my loved ones are not capable of loving and caring for me like I would do for them. Don’t misunderstand me. I am in no way talking about an even-stevens kind of thing. I’m just a man who is terribly saddened that his family, for lack of a better phrasing, ‘could give a fuck’ that he is hurting every single day.