I have a few very stark memories of times when I actively saw my life crumble before my eyes.
One time, when I was in high school, I came home from a long day of classes and meetings and sat on my bed, leaned my back against the wall, and stared at the wall in front of me. For hours, I didn’t move a muscle. If anyone had walked through my bedroom door, they would have mistaken me for a mannequin. Only when it was time for bed did I shift my body to the side and crawl underneath the covers to fall sleep. I, for the lack of a better word, felt lifeless that day. I had felt pretty lifeless for a long time.
Looking back, it’s evident I felt more pain than I knew what to do with, but I never addressed it as pain. I was too numb to really feel anything, so I told myself I felt nothing. But truth be told, “numb” isn’t synonymous with “nothing”. Numb is when you feel everything all at once. Numb is when your body is invaded by every emotion under the sun, and you’re too inundated with polarized feelings so you cast each one of them aside and opt to feel neutralized.
It is only in retrospect that I know all of this. In the moment, I carried too much heaviness to know how to wear it properly, so I stuffed it in my back pockets, pulled my shirt over my pants, and kept my feet moving.
Today, I know it wasn’t that I felt nothing. I don’t think I’ve ever felt nothing, if I’m being honest. I am a highly sensitive person, and I have always been that way. I don’t think most people would assume that upon meeting me face-to-face based on how I carry myself and how I keep my composure in social situations, but underneath all the unwritten rules we uphold for the “performance”, I’m a well of emotions (for myself and for so many others).
For the longest time, especially after high school, I searched high and low for happiness. In the small ways, the big ways— all the ways. I felt like I was on this never ending pursuit of finding pleasure, seeking out more and more to fill my cup up with a mountain of happy moments in which I could survive and thrive off of.
In the same breath, I would repel pain. I did everything in my power to avoid putting myself in situations to feel pain because I never wanted to feel so low again.
But pain, I learned, is inherent to the human experience. It is inescapable, and when you label pain as “bad” (the same way you label anything as “bad”), you’re subconsciously teaching yourself to avoid it.
“This doesn’t feel good. I don’t want it.”
“I’m not putting myself in that situation. It could end poorly.”
“If pain is a possibility, I’m removing myself completely.”
All of those statements and assumptions, inadvertently, attract pain into your life, whether you realize it or not. Shout out to law of attraction.
More so though, pain is not a “bad” thing. You label it bad because you don’t know how to deal with it. You can’t see the purpose of it. You’re not aware of how much you’re going to grow from it.
Have you ever met a woman who carried a child for nine months, went through brutal labor, and delivered a human being into this world (all of which is associated with different types of pain) and then told you, “I regret having this baby because it was too painful,"?
I argue you’ve never met that woman. Why? Because her pain birthed life. Her pain was the foundation for the happiest moment of her entire existence, and given the option of going through that pain all over again, despite how horrific it felt, she would choose her pain every single time if it meant she could hold her child in her arms thereafter.
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This year I’ve experienced pain in a new light. For months I was actively aware of the pain I felt, and it was impossible for me to avoid feeling it. It was the complete opposite scenario of what I went through in high school. I did not feel numb whatsoever.
I felt pain. I sat in pain. I slept in pain. I ate in pain. I drove in pain. I did everything in pain. And I managed my way through, not because I distracted myself from the feeling, but because I reminded myself that my pain had a purpose. Fighting it would have only created more discomfort and aversion, so instead, I welcomed it. I made room for it. I worked alongside it because I knew it wasn’t going to stay forever, and whoever I was meant to become when that pain left was going to be well worth the journey.
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They say you can only feel indifferent as much as you had once loved.
You can only fear as much as you desire.
You can only feel pain as much as you feel peace.
I’m not an advocate for actively inviting pain into your life (I’m actually an advocate for the opposite), but I don’t fear pain as much as I used to. I feel pain on a fairly frequent basis, but that doesn’t scare me anymore.
I’ve learned the more you open yourself up to peace and to pleasure, the more you open yourself up to pain. They exist on opposite ends of the same spectrum, and for this reason, when you invite more love, desire, peace, or happiness into your life, you are creating space to feel their opposites to the same degree of intensity.
All of that goes to say, expanding your consciousness and seeking out happiness, peace, love— what have you— is what we all do, right? The people who understand and accept that notion also understand and accept that indifference, fear, pain and all other “negative” emotions are going to tag along with the “positives”.
Feeling pain and experiencing sadness is not a sign of weakness. It is a reflection of how deeply and beautifully you can feel peace and happiness.
I urge you not to shy away from the lessons you’ll learn when you’re in a low, but more importantly, I urge you to reframe the negative narrative you have painted around pain.
Those who can feel happiness to its greatest degree are the same people who can feel pain to its greatest degree. That is because we exist in duality. Anyone who avoids that truth is avoiding the totality of the human experience, and that, in my eyes, is the worst kind of pain.
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