There is a sentence that climbs up your throat on the bad days. What did I do to deserve this. Some people finish it out loud — to deserve these parents, to deserve being married to this person, to deserve waking up in this exact room again. You can carry that question a long time. It rarely gives you an answer.
If this were a punishment, it would have a set price
Think about how punishment actually works. A fine comes with an amount and a due date. A prison sentence comes with a length — this many months, and then the door opens and you walk out. Someone set the price. You pay the price. The account closes.
Even the harshest punishment is decided in advance. On the day it is handed down, you already know what it is and how long it will last.
That is what makes a punishment a punishment. A penalty with no set amount and no last payment is not a penalty at all.
You have paid more than once, and the account is still open
Now hold your own life next to that. Nobody named a figure. Nobody set a release date. There is no office you can walk into and ask how much is left to pay.
You have taken more than you ever thought you could take. You have said to yourself, more than once, that you have served your time for whatever this is. You kept a private count. You decided that after this much, surely, the thing would be settled.
Then a season goes by, and there you are in the same kitchen, in the same argument, saying what you already said the last time.
Nothing closed. Nothing got crossed off. Something you keep paying and never finish paying is not a punishment — no punishment works that way. And if it is not a punishment, then there is no crime you are paying for either. There is no ledger. Nobody wrote your name at the top of a page and started adding up what you owe.
A hard life is heavy, and it is still not payment for anything. You are not going through all this because of something you did wrong. That does not mean nobody has hurt you. A parent or partner who was violent, or who failed to look after you, is responsible for what they did. But being treated unfairly does not mean you deserved it.
Nobody asks what a rich man did to deserve it
You never hear the question asked the other way round. Nobody looks at a man with money and asks what he did to deserve that. You only ask what you did to deserve something when it hurts. So the question does not show that your life is a punishment. It only shows how much your life hurts right now.
What the question is really asking
“What did I do to deserve this?” comes out of pain, but it is not asking how to ease the pain. It is asking who is to blame — who did this, who let it happen, who has to answer for it.
So you look for somewhere to put the blame. Sometimes you put it on your parents, or on your husband or wife. Sometimes you turn it on yourself. What did I do wrong. What is wrong with me.
Pick someone to blame and see what happens next
Once you decide who is to blame, there is no next step.
Decide it was your parents, and you are left with resentment. Decide it was you, and you are left with self-blame. Both are heavy, and neither one moves you a single inch. Tomorrow morning arrives exactly the same either way. You changed who you blame. Nothing else changed.
This is how you can tell that the question Who is to blame? will not give you the answer you need. Blaming your parents may explain where the pain began. Blaming yourself may feel easier than living with pain that has no reason at all. If it is your fault, at least there is a reason, and the world feels predictable again, as if you were in control. That control is not real. Neither kind of blame tells you what you need now or what you can do next. The question keeps you looking for a guilty person, when what you actually need is to decide how you will respond.
Living with someone impossible, or getting rich: both show you who you are
We learn who we are by living through very different things. Some people learn it by living with someone impossible. Some learn it by getting rich. Nobody would call getting rich a punishment. Living with someone impossible is not a punishment either. It is another way of finding out who you are.
Joy, pain, and a problem that will not go away each show you something different about yourself. Hard times especially show what makes you go silent, what makes you attack, what you can endure, and where you give up your own needs just to keep a relationship. However different the situations are, each one lets you see how you tend to respond to what life puts in front of you.
Your own life, exactly as it is, is where you meet yourself. That is not because the suffering was handed to you as a punishment. It is because you can only see how you respond in the situations you actually have to live through.
You may have no idea what “knowing yourself” even means
If I told you to go and find out who you are, you would probably have no idea where to start. I know. But you are already in the middle of finding out. That is what you have been doing all these hard years.
So watch yourself as you live through them. What makes you go silent. What makes you say something you will regret the same night. Whose single remark still knocks you flat years later. What you can carry far longer than you expected to. Where you give in at the first push.
You are not a fact filed away somewhere, waiting to be looked up. Who you are shows up in how you deal with whatever is in front of you. It comes out in pieces, mostly under pressure.
When the question comes back
I am not asking you to stop saying it. Say it. Say the whole thing, out loud if you are alone in the car. What did I do to deserve these parents. What did I do to deserve being married to this person. Do not cut it short and do not be polite with it.
Then, when you have said all of it, add another question: What does this situation show me about how I respond, what I keep repeating, and what I need to do differently now?
The circumstances may not change right away. But the second question gives you somewhere to go. The first question looks for someone to blame. The second helps you recognise your pattern and choose your next response.
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Written by Kim Hyung-keun — Director, Seoul Addiction Psychology Institute · Director, Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis · Object relations psychotherapist and supervisor, 26 years in practice and teaching. Counselling Board