Several things happened in the span of a day. And these things made me think, of all things, of a freshman year party and puking in trash cans.

Flashback to freshman year. My roommate Mitch and my friend Max had back-to-back birthdays, Mitch’s birthday on April 6 and April 8. My friend group decided to celebrate with two nights of hanging out at Max’s house while Mama and Papa Max were away. Included in the festivities was “Reese,” a guy on our floor. We ended up regretting it.

Now, disclaimer: people change, and Reese is proof of that. I kept running into Reese throughout my college years, and I could see him growing as a person when I did. However, on these two nights, he was absolutely obnoxious. Full disclosure: people were drinking at Max’s house, Reese more than anybody. In the order I remember them happening: Mitch ended up putting Reese in a rear naked choke when Reese grabbed Mitch’s vape and ran; he came on super-creepily to one of Max’s high school friends when they were both in Max’s hot tub; and on the drive back to campus on Saturday night, it was only when we were halfway back that Reese realized he’d left his wallet at Max’s house. So, when we got back to campus and Reese tossed me his bag and ran to an outdoor trash can to vomit, my patience was at a low.

But, as I approached Reese, watched as he leaned over the trash bin and I heard the sound of regurgitated food hitting trash, I felt the strangest thing: affection.

I walked over to Reese, waited for him to throw everything up, handed him his bag when he was done, and we went inside.

Come back to the present, specifically last Friday (January 13). In the span of one morning, I learned that one of my coworkers is in the middle of extracting themself from a domestic violence situation. I learned that one of my students’ homes is currently being investigated by CPS, and that this student experienced serious academic regression due to one of their siblings getting murdered. And I learned that one of my students has been experiencing panic attacks, triggered by memories of a parent who died when they were in elementary school.

And the kicker? I can’t actually do much about any of these situations.

As much as I’d like to track down my coworker’s partner and see how much they like getting hit, a. I don’t know how I’d do that and b. somebody would be going to jail, and it’s not Jerkface. And as much as I’d like to point at my two students and say, “You’re coming home with me!” the law and the rules laid out to me in training say I can’t.

It hurts to care.

We live in a caring-averse society. We live in a world where Twitter tears apart a woman innocently Tweeting about how much she loves her morning routine. Where a quarter of surveyed people have ghosted potential romantic partners, and three-quarters of surveyed people think ghosting is a good way to end a relationship. Where a major news outlet like Salon hails the late David Foster Wallace as a prophet when he said irony is ruining our culture. Where award-winning rock band The 1975 have a song called “Sincerity is Scary”, with an accompanying music video that has 25 million views. Why is this the case? Why is irony the new black?

Because, to paraphrase the words of a certain clawed Canadian, “Bad things happen when we care about people.”

The question isn’t if caring about someone will hurt, the question is when. Friends will drop you for no good reason. Family members will break promises. People you look up to will have their character destroyed by a scandal. Partners will dump you out of nowhere, reveal an affair, abuse you or use your vulnerabilities against you.

And the hard truth? You have to accept it.

One of the most life-changing videos I’ve ever watched I first saw back in high school. It was a speech by V, FKA Eve Ensler, a feminist playwright and creator of The Vagina Monologues, where she talked about the war between freedom and security. While she was speaking in the context of politics and society (hello, PATRIOT Act and the Iraq War), the same can be said about relationships. You’re allowed to be emotionally closed off to your friends, your partners, your family members, your mentors, so long as you understand that emotional “security” comes at a cost: connection. In the same way that someone who makes their home into Fort Knox and never leaves has security at the cost of the freedom of living in the world, someone who locks away their emotions and vulnerabilities and never opens up or tries to get close to anyone has emotional security, but no emotional freedom.

After my lonely teenage years, a tough start to college, and the forced solitude of the pandemic, I thought I’d learned this lesson as much as I needed to. Then, I started working with kids.

At some point in late November or early December, I learned several of my students thought I was boring. At the very start of December, I flamed out. A day that was awful from start to finish had me ready to quit. Two of my mentors verbalized some thoughts I didn’t know I’d been having: that I had almost no connections in my school. I kept my distance from my coworkers, preferring the company of whatever book I was reading. I barely knew any staff aside from my partner teacher, and barely knew anything about most of my students–heck, I didn’t even know a lot of my students’ names! Latrell, my mentor, spelled it out for me: I wasn’t going to make it to the end of the school year unless I was willing to open up.

Latrell was right. I made that a goal when I came back from Christmas break, which is how I found out about my coworker’s situation and the background info about my students.

I want this pain.

Human existence has to have misery. No coping mechanism–no amount of money, no mind-altering substance, no amount of solitude or company, no religion, no political movement, nothing–can change the fact that at some point between being put in our mothers’ arms for the first time and being set at the bottom of a gravesite, we will experience hardship. So, we have a choice. We can endure those hardships with the additional hardship of a lack of emotional connection, or we can get down in the mud, connect our hurt to those stuck in the mud with us, and we can be broken together.

Back to “Reese” for the conclusion. I took him back to his room, made sure he was in bed, and then went back to my room and hopped on the Xbox. As my Call of Duty match started, I thought over the night. I focused in on helping Reese. It was a pain in the butt, having to do damage control for the stupid things Reese had done throughout the night. And yet, thinking about those couple of seconds where I’d helped Reese get the alcohol out of his system, all the trouble seemed…worth it. It was the seed, planted so it could bloom five years later as I returned to work.

It hurts to care about other people. To see my coworker cry as they spill the beans about their personal life. To hear a student say their parents don’t care what they do, no matter how dangerous. To watch my student’s face fall as they confess they’ve been obsessively thinking about their deceased parent.

But that kind of hurt, the kind you get by standing by someone when they’re at their lowest?

That’s the hurt I want.