Tracey was last in a circle of 20. And the vortex of woe was closing in.
She'd just finished an expensive company directors' course in Melbourne — paid for by her employer because they rate her, they're investing in her. The cohort had spent weeks learning financial literacy, risk management, fiduciary duty, corporate structure. On the final day, they sat around in a relieved pow-wow, sipping bubble tea through fat straws. The instructor asked them to share their journey.
The first speaker said his mum lost her job, so he didn't finish school. Yet here he was. "Go, you," they said. "Major props, dude."
The next said her dad died when she was little and she had a learning disability. Eager applause.
The third — sniffing the wind, perhaps — said he grew up an orphan in Sri Lanka with scant schooling and English as his second language. A big ruckus of support.
Pain became the currency. And they were all in.
Whether their revelations were exaggerated, true or relevant didn't matter. The impulse to self-identify as a sufferer is understandable and perfectly represents the age. They told increasingly brutal tales, escalating episodes of excruciation en route to the here-and-now. Each speaker seemed determined to own a blacker history than the last. Brothers took to drugs. Sisters were estranged. Syndromes were cited. Fathers denounced.
Then it was Tracey's turn.
She had two options: buy in, like a pentecostal congregant collapsing as demons are sucked through her forehead — or become a heretic by telling the truth. Her problem? She grew up in a harmonious home. Went to a good school. Did well academically. Happily married to that Australian unicorn — a good man.
Damn, what a shitshow.
Still, she couldn't compete with the agonies. So she bit the bullet and confessed all.
After she spoke, there was a confused silence while listeners contemplated this risky new direction. Then they laughed. No applause. Who knows what they were thinking? Some probably felt a dim shame at amplifying their own struggles to fit the day's needs. Some were likely outraged that a woman had come along brandishing happiness like a Rolex. Some were likely astounded you could, in this day and age, stand up in a public forum and admit to being OK.
"It tells you something of the sour now that growing up unscarred and living without torment is so on the nose as a 'lived experience' when it's what we're all trying to achieve."
The statistics — as painstakingly built as a Lego Charles Ponzi by social scientists and fanfared as truth nightly by the ABC — suggest life is way more painful for their current crush than for anyone else. Painlessness is a type of privilege approximating evil. Happiness is a rationed reality that must have been stolen from your fellow human.
Only starting from a domestic dystopia or a failed state can your journey resonate. Only a rocky past makes you virtuous. And while it's true a rough upbringing is more likely to lead you into calamity than a happy home is, it's also true that only a fool, when caught in a stolen Porsche, wouldn't claim causal circumstance. "It wasn't me, your honour. It was the pills, it was the parents, it was the pokies, it was a Marxist revolution followed by a banquet of betting agencies."
These days most of us are at pains to hide our lack of pain. So kudos to Tracey for admitting to hers. She told the truth in a room where trauma was the only acceptable currency — and she walked out with nothing but laughter.
Maybe that's the real story.