When I’m awake at four in the morning and the shadows are alive, the darkest thoughts skulk furtively through my brain. Your life (the voices whisper) is too hard. How were you the one picked to live like this? Nobody else has to deal with what you have to deal with. Is that fair? Don’t you deserve better?

Then, sooner or later, the next day comes along and it all sounds so selfish and self-pitying that I’m embarrassed that the thoughts, however fleeting, were allowed to germinate. Embarrassed even though I would never express those thoughts to another living, breathing human (at least not in earnest, as if that was how I really felt in the cold light of day).

Life is hard. It’s hard for everybody, even the rich and powerful, even the confident and talented. It’s too hard for some, but it’s not all that hard for me, relatively speaking. I have to remember the rest of the world when I’m thinking this way.

Still, nobody has to deal with what I have to deal with. My own circumstances have their unique set of challenges, some of which I’m not fit to overcome. Like everyone else, I plod along at the pace that seems most likely to get me from sunup to sundown. And then the lights go out and the shadows and the voices return. Life is hard, but it’s predictable enough that shooing the ghosts should be merely a matter of will.

So yes, last night was a bad one. Today was hard, like every day, but rewarding, like most days. Complaining helps just about as much as denial does, so I do what feels right at the time. Sometimes I complain, and sometimes I keep it in and hope no one can see inside, into the shadows. When I measure my life against the way of the world, I know how good I have it. But we all deserve better.