There are few things more pathetic (and I mean that in the ‘causing and provoking pity’ sense of the word, not the ‘miserably or contemptibly inadequate’ sense - thanks, dictionary.com) than the site of my ten year old girl, tucked up on the sofa for the second day in a row, completely at the mercy of this dreaded winter ‘flu.

Here in Australia, and in freezing-cold Canberra to be exact, there are some nasty winter bugs going around, and the girls in this family have all succumbed, one by one. My eight year old had it a fortnight ago, last week was my turn, and now it’s Madeleine’s. This poor kid’s annual winter bout of the ‘flu usually involves a trip to the ER in the middle of the night for a dose of something to open her airways. She has a tendency to develop croup when she catches a cold, and I’ve seen her lips turn blue enough times now that we now know to take her in the minute she starts sounding even remotely seal-like. We took her last night at about 8.30pm, and fourteen hours later she’s happily ensconced on the sofa with her iPod, the remote control, her Nintendo, the electronic thermometer and a banana smoothie, breathing easier. She never complains, she just looks at me with bloodshot, teary eyes and pulls Buster the Bear in a bit tighter. Which is all a parent really needs to hear, really. More chocolate, darling? OK. Here, have a whole block.

Compare this act of incredible bravery with my own experience a few days ago. I was actually weeping. I would like to tell you that my aches and pains were FAR WORSE than Madeleine’s struggle to breathe but I’m pretty sure that argument wouldn’t fly. But I really, really felt terrible. Everything ached, nothing fixed it, and nobody was giving me chocolate. And did I complain? You BET I did. I complained to my husband at every opportunity, begged him to make the nasty aches go away, implored him to do something, anything, to make my life less miserable. Yes, it was extremely undignified.

Why do we complain? Does it actually make us feel better, somehow, to be explaining to somebody else just how rotten we feel? Do we do it for the sympathy, for the chance for a cuddle or some flowers or just some acknowledgment that what we’re going through really is awful? Is complaining just another way of seeking validation? Maybe it is. But that doesn’t explain why some people complain and others don’t. Don’t we all need validation for the way we are feeling?

I’m a shameless complainer. OK, maybe not completely shameless. Sure, I feel a bit ridiculous afterwards, especially if the person I’m complaining to calls me on it and points out how pathetic - in the miserably or contemptibly inadequate sense - it is to see a grown woman weeping about a little upper respiratory infection. A dear friend of mine has just been through several harrowing sessions of chemotherapy and the only time I’ve heard her complain was when she was getting frustrated with the turban covering her bald head, because it kept slipping sideways. I’ve heard about chemo, I’ve seen people in the movies go through it - it looks like sheer bloody hell, but I never once heard a peep of a ‘why me??’ from my friend. Why doesn’t she ask for sympathy? Doesn’t she need somebody to tell her ‘you poor bugger, I’m so sorry, that must be awful, you’re very brave’?

Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she has made peace with the fact that this is just something she has to go through, something that will eventually make her stronger and wiser. Maybe when you’ve got something that awful happening to you, it just seems like a complete waste of energy to be undignified and ask someone else to agree with you that it’s awful. Yes, that must be it. And that would explain, I suppose, why I wept at my aching body… in the great scheme of things, a mild upper respiratory infection really isn’t that bad. In fact, it’s pretty contemptibly inadequate. I wasn’t weeping because it hurt so much, I was weeping because of the futility of having a cold that had knocked me completely on my arse without teaching me anything profound about myself other than the certainty of my own pathetic-ness.

I think I’ll just stick to my job as chief medicine-distributor and chocolate-provider and try to remember to take some echinacea next winter so I can avoid getting sick and miserable in the first place.

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