Wow! I hope this didn't spring directly from personal experience, but the ring of authenticity here tells me if it isn't you, it's someone very close to you (mother, sister, friend) stuck in this rut. My mom quotes Ecclesiastes - "accept your lot in life" - but someone else recently commented that this seems to be what the downtrodden are taught to believe (to keep them underfoot). This is powerful writing about the powerless: not being able to choose, or choosing that what doesn't make our souls sing is a kind of suffering....the soul got a little stab every time she was choosing to deny herself. The stab wounds were invisible but bleeding just the same. Bleeding the joy out of her life. Even the will to live.