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How To Stop Wallowing in Self-Pity
Or One Miss Havisham is Enough.
Miss Havisham is a character who wallows in self-pity after she is jilted by her would-be husband. To make sure to never get over this moment of being wronged, she wears the wedding dress from that day forth.
For years I listened to philosophers like Vernon Howard say drop your pain, stop loving your pain. I could never see that I loved my pain. So, I looked to literature to see it more objectively. By looking at how someone else loved their pain and refused to move on, I had an “aha” moment.
How is the pain enjoyed?
It is a thrill to remember how what I thought was going to happen, didn’t happen. It’s the climax of a novel. We all love that climax even if it ruins the character’s life. It’s exciting. Shocking.
The story of being jilted is all Miss Havisham needs to be the star of a huge drama. She was done wrong. Her expectation was not met.
There are expectations that we have due to what society tells us should happen to us by such and such time. We should live happily ever after, successfully. If this doesn’t happen, where do we go? Disappointment, of course. What else can we do? We can’t force the happily ever after. All we can do going forward is mourn the lack of that happily ever after.
Why don’t we let go?
While we aren’t as blatant as Miss Havisham to wear an emblem of our disappointment, we carry the memory of disappointment in our minds. We don’t need a dress to trigger the memory. Seeing someone else with that thing we seemed entitled to or, better yet, seeing everyone with that thing does it. (Everyone doesn’t have it, by the way. Nice dramatic touch, though.)
No, No, I Won’t Let Go!
Do you think Miss Havisham will give up her right to wallow in self-pity, to feel so wronged? Oh no. Would Carrie White, if she survived prom night, ever stop wallowing in what happened at that awful moment on stage at the prom? Remembering the sting of painful emotion makes it okay to feel wronged. If we really think about human nature and, not our fantasy of human nature, we might move away from shock to understanding.
