In a sick sense I like living with something that is dying. It’s like that house plant you never bother to water. It’s not dying because you don’t want it or you don’t think it’s worth the life, sure it probably is more beautiful than most humans, but it’s dying simply because you’re too busy to water it. Neglect kills things, and even if you did water it, somethings are just meant to die.

Once a friend told me to stop complaining, that we both “needed to forget everything complain worthy about our lives and get over them”. And I agree, we focus too much on the negative aspects of life, rather than be happy we've been allowed to live it long enough to have things that are hard about it. But I also believe that that’s complete crap. I complain not because I want to be a victim, but because I hurt. We all hurt whether the kids in Africa starve or not and that’s a harsh realization, but if you’re so concerned about the kids in Africa then why are you sitting around here with me? Go save them, go give them food, help them, telling me their starving changes absolutely nothing, for me and them. People’s problems don’t disappear because others exist, in fact that reality that other people are dying just makes me feel worse. Good job.

My dog is dying. She has been since the moment she was born, even before we knew it, or the vet told us, she was a ticking time bomb ready to explode. Happy birthday to me. We now give her medicine 3 times a day, and she determines what time we get home, without her vanilla ice cream mixed with whatever liquid medicine every 8 hours she has little chance at surviving… That being said she still suffers from seizures that last nearly a minute every time, which varies from once a week to twice a day. Does my dog know she’s dying? I can’t tell you that. After every seizure she gets right back up, usually falling for a bit before regaining her senses and continues on as though nothing has happened. To be honest I’m scared for the time she doesn't get back up. It’s going to happen, we just don’t know when. She also twitches, whole entire body like clockwork, up down, up down, up down, it never ends and when it does, that means she’s dead. It’s hard watching her constantly moving even though the vet says the tick doesn't hurt her, it’s a reminder that she’s death walking. She’s a dog. I get that. But she’s my dog, and clichély enough she listens to me complain and not once has she ever stopped me and told me I needed to move on or “hey you ungrateful human, I’m dying, my problems are worse than your irrelevant ones get over them”. Because even though she’s dying, she can tell I’m hurt and she cares and she cuddles me and we fall asleep neither of us knowing if that was our last day or not. Because no one knows.

I believe pain is what living is all about. It hurts to live and when we die that’s when we get to be free, until then we suffer through it. It’s a beautiful suffering of course. And yes some suffering is bigger, hurts more, and looks more romantic then having the “perfect little life”, but I can’t tell you how cancer feels, or what starvation looks like, or even how watching a loved being buried in the ground destroys you. I can tell you what it’s like to be innocent and then not, and how hot it gets on summer nights when your electricity gets turned off, and how to stare at a wall and not understand the tears streaming down your face, what it’s like to have a manic person in your life that tells you look like a boy or have gained weight, I can complain to you, but my feelings are not as great as a kid with cancer, I don’t deserve pain when kids in Africa are starving, and how dare I cry when all the people I love are still here. How dare I feel sad when I have nothing to actually be sad about. We invalidate emotions we feel because people tell us we don’t deserve to feel them. But feeling are natural chemical things, we don’t get to choose them and as of date we have yet to create a realistic scale for them either.

No one feels the same pain when then break their finger, or give birth, or get kicked in balls. Pain is subjective. I don’t cry when I’m in physical pain, when I broke my shoulder no one believe it until they saw they X-ray. Why? Because at a mere 10 years old I walked into the ER with my mom dry eyed and grunting like a tennis star. The nurse asked me to rate my pain and I gave my broken bone a 5, mostly because I didn't understand on what scale she was talking about. My mom said giving birth hurt A LOT so I thought that would be a 10, then again my dad cut off half a finger while making a TV cabinet on accident and the doctors came to our house to get him and rushed him away to hospital so maybe that was a 10? My brother got in a car accident and was flung out the car window when he was in the hospital he gave the doctors an 8, so I knew that wasn't my answer, all I had gotten was being tripped playing soccer and landed wrong. My mistake was thinking the scale included other people. I thought 5 was a safe number right in the middle. It took the hospital 3 hours, a total 5 since I had broken the bone (I stayed in school 2 hours not thinking it was a big deal until I felt dizzy to which my teacher called my mom telling her it was probably nothing, but she might want to take me to the hospital) to deliver my pain killers and that wasn't until after the X-ray came back saying it was broken. Before then my mom kept asking the doctors to give me some, telling them I was in great pain, but they’d look at me and I’d smile back politely and wave with the arm that didn't feel like it was on fire. The doctor apologized several times about not getting me the medicine earlier, but when he saw I wasn't crying he thought that it was only a deep contusion (bruise) and he didn't want to medicate me if I didn't need it. He then looked at me and asked how old I was, my answer caused him to raise his eyebrows and my mom explained I was “one though cookie” and grew up with older brothers that liked to rough house. That wasn't the real reason I didn't cry.

I didn't cry because I was me, because I was the girl in my school no one had ever seen cry. Even with my separation anxiety and nervous nature all throughout my childhood I only cried in the schools bathroom or with my parents or brothers arms were around me protecting me from the outside world. I didn't cry not because I wasn't in pain, but because the world I lived in didn't allow it.

I don’t cry in movies either, not while watching The Notebook, or Marley and Me, or Les Miserables, or even The Fault in Our Stars, I know heartless. Trust me I understood how weird it truly is after an old woman walking out of Les Mis stared hardcore at me and said “if you didn't cry during that movie you have no heart”. And don’t ask about the Titanic because I refuse to watch that movie with anyone… I’m waiting for a time I really want to cry. I mean of course some have gotten me like, The Pursuit of Happyness, Grave of the Fireflies, and more recently American Sniper. Why those movies and not others you may ask. Well I believe it’s because they’re real to me. The Notebook is about being in love and I've never felt that, Marley and Me is about a dog that grows up with a family and then dies and at the time I watched that I didn't even have a dog (if I watched it now it may be a different story), and Les Miserables, well as much as I hate to admit it, the singing totally made me feel like the whole thing wasn't real, I mean who sings when they’re dying?? (I do appreciate musicals I just don’t cry during them apparently) and The Fault in Our Stars… I’m not close with anyone who has cancer. Anyway point being The Pursuit of Happyness is all about a struggling father trying to make it for his son, my parents do that every day for me and my family, I could feel that emotion, I related to it… Grave of the Fireflies well just watch it, (THE REST OF THIS SENTENCE KINDA SPOILS STUFF, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED) and if you have anyone in your life you’d do anything for and then they just leave after everything you've done to try and save them then you’ll bawl, in fact you’ll bawl no matter what. And American Sniper, well hard choices, doing everything you can to save the people you love and just well as much as America is messed up, it really hits whatever American pride I got left… dying for something you believe in is just… real to me.

We all don’t cry for the same reasons, we all don’t share the same pain, we’re all different and our emotions should be validated. We feel because we our alive, we complain not to be the victim but because man, does it hurt some times. It hurts because it’s real. I never tell people to get over it, or forget it, I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe we get over things or that we can forget them. To live is to feel and to feel is to have emotion the whole freaking rainbow of them. And we don’t get to always choose what that emotion is, or what number it is on a scale of 1 to 10. Some emotions just are there and we don’t get to control that. We say depressed people have an unbalanced level of certain chemicals in their brain, that they feel that way because it’s a mutation of the body that isn't natural because not everyone has it. Which is true, and for the most part medicine helps. But denying someone’s emotions isn't a cure. My 5 is another bawling 10 year old's 9, my sadness is someone’s best day, and my tears watching someone struggle to make ends meet, is someone’s dry eyes or tears seeing 2 people madly in love die in each other’s arms. Who am I to tell you which is valid, who deserves to feel what they feel. I’m not a victim, I’m trying to say I’m a sad person or want your sympathy, because if that’s what you think you've read this wrong. I want you realize your 10 isn't your friends 10 or your moms or neighbors. What you think is big is small to other people but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be allowed to feel exactly what you feel. You should validate your emotions because they aren't going to “get over it” or “forget themselves” your emotions are a part of you because they’re meant to be. You’re meant to feel what you feel and if you don’t like how you feel then you need to deal with that, not hide them, or let people tell others have it worse, those don’t make your emotions go away. Figure out why you feel that way, deal with the problem, get help, therapists aren't creepy doctors who make you sit in a chair and feel uncomfortable and if yours does find a new one, mental checkups can be as important as physical ones.

Point being your emotions are 100% valid, anyone who tells you differently isn't you, so they don’t know any better, but that doesn't mean you have to listen to them. How you feel isn't a game of “who has it worse” there’s no prize for having the “worst life” and having the “worst life” doesn't make anyone who has the “best life” and how they feel unimportant. There’s no universal scale for pain, and their never will be. How you feel is how you feel and you shouldn't be ashamed of it.

My dog is dying, but that doesn't mean she lives any differently then you or I, she gets help from her medicine and encouragement from us to be who she is and live a happy life, her pain is no more or any less than mine or yours. She feels how she feels, her dying is my 8, but to her maybe it’s her 2. I wouldn't know, emotions are subjective. They depend on who are you and what your story is. Your 10 is not my 10, you are not me and I’m not you, never will be, but a 10 is 10, remember that.