Possibly my favorite poem is “A Dream Within a Dream” by Edgar Allan Poe.
I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand — How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep — while I weep! O God! Can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
I took this seriously, and I took it personally. It felt like it was my calling- my mission- to save the grains of sand. Except, of course, they were not grains of sand at all. They were people. My people. Anyone in need of care. It was my mission, it was my task, and it was necessary.
I have spent the greater part of the last two years unlearning this. It’s not that I don’t want to save the grains of sand. I still do. It’s that it was destroying me. It meant I was taking responsibility for things that were out of my control. People that were out of my control.
I cannot make people do what is good for them, or what is in their best interest.
I cannot cure people’s incurable mental illness.
I cannot pretend a person who does not exist into existence.
All my wishing cannot create reality.
Denial only gets you so far.
But waking up from denial hurts. It means you encounter a world that is far messier than the one in which you lived. Fantasizing is a form of self preservation. When your fantasy shatters- suddenly, brutally- the littered glass pieces lie underfoot, and they make you bleed.
So you bleed.
And fall apart.
And get up again.
And you engage in the hard work of figuring out how to live better. You set boundaries. You keep to them. And you recognize there is only so much you can control. Only so much you can fix. You can’t be Atlas.
It’s not a shirking of responsibilities. It’s not a failure. But it will feel like one.
And no matter how much progress you have made, something will happen, and you’ll be right back in that headspace again.
What if I had…?
Should I have…?
What can I do now?
How can I affect the outcome?
Lurking in the back of your head, what you are really asking is: is this my fault?
The answer is no. It can’t be your fault. You don’t have that much power in the first place. You cannot bind people to your will, control them, and force them to act the way you believe would be best for them. You will know this, and you will be able to calmly speak the words that prove this, but you will not believe this. You will believe there was a different way things could have gone, and you will wonder if there was any type of intervention you could have offered that would have tipped the scale.
You will be sad.
But that is all right. It will pass.
Because you have learned this, too. The waves come. They wash over you. They recede.
You’re left standing.