Hey guys, I know it has been awhile. I’ve come to understand that sometimes what you think is the most messed up parts of life will quickly become lesser than what you are about to experience. I have also come to understand that I cannot be as perfect as I would like to be. I can be so consistent for a large period of time but chaos will come and my idea of perfection will fly out the window yet again.
It is my hope that today’s writing will help you, possibly even inspire you to take life’s difficulties from a different angle. It is my hope that if you are in despair that you can reach from my suffering and learn to wade through the deep waters as I have. Because in reality, the bottom is that sometimes life just sucks. Life hurts. Life is definitely no walk in the park. Sometimes we may find that what we think is the most perfect thing in the world ends up uncovering its blemishes or even worse, to find out that our item of perfection was nowhere near what we thought it to be. I’m guessing something or even someone probably came to mind as you read that. It’s a dark place to open up to. It’s a difficult thing to think about. But I want you to hold on to that person, hold on to that thing, and when you’re ready, keep reading.
I’ve been hurt, as I’m sure you all have. Not once, not twice, but more times than I can count. Am I alone in this? No. Does it help me to know others have been through my pain? Well, if I’m truly honest, not all the time. And that’s ok! Nobody has truly been in your exact shoes at your exact moment in time with your exact problem. That’s a time and space nobody can fill but you. But what you have to understand is that when people reach out to you, they are trying to comfort you by telling you they know what it’s like. It may not help you at that moment. In fact, it may make you mad that they would even try to feel like they know how you’re feeling. And that’s ok! But try to understand why they are saying what they are saying, and if you need to, just tell them to listen. People often feel awkward by not giving you advice so let them know their silence is ok. Be open. Communicate. Back off my sidetracked thought…
Pain sucks. Being hurt sucks. There have been times when people have admitted things to me that almost shut me down right away. In those moments, I truly wish I had never gotten out of bed. I wish that I could relieve myself of my duties and just revert into a hole where nobody knows who I am or that I even exist. At those moments, ignorance truly seems like bliss. It absolutely sucks to be in emotional pain. But, hiding pain is not the answer. I’ve come to realize that by escaping our pain, we are only burying a problem that will resurface again later. Pain that is not dealt with correctly will grow to such a size that it has the ability to affect you for the rest of your life, even subconsciously. We need to find a reason to get us through that pain, a method of dealing with it intentionally. Though I’m no expert on this topic, I thought I would share a bit of a journey through pain with you.
Someone once said something to me that I did not want to hear. They admitted something they had not told me for many months. My body went through the initial physical phase of wanting to shut down, literally go to sleep. However, I was at work and that was not an option. So I sat. I couldn’t look at my phone. And the feelings strongly kicked in. What this person admitted was nothing even done intentionally to me, but even they had mentioned they hated having to tell me. I was angry, sad, depressed, everything all at once. And yet, in my head, as upset as I was and as much as part of me wanted to lash out, I also pulled myself back to notice the sincerity of what they were saying and realizing how bold it was of that person to tell me. They were willing to take whatever reaction I gave in order to tell me the truth. Even though the truth sucked, my mind kept reminding me of what they had just done. It’s not always easy to walk in someone else’s shoes when you’re the one in pain. But somehow, someway, it’s so important that we slow ourselves down to realize that perhaps the situation isn’t so easy on them either. Perhaps they regret it more than you hate hearing it. Perhaps they’re sharing it with you because of how awful they feel. Perhaps they are already so sorry that they’re willing to let you decide what the final outcome will be.
I could not escape the feelings I had for the next few hours of the day. I had no way out. Did it change the way people saw me? Absolutely. I was referred to as “the one who’s almost ready to cry.” My job had to come first. I am, after all, responsible for the little humans in my care. And though I could not bring myself to respond like normal to this person, I also knew that I would regret making that person feel any worse than I knew they probably did. It’s important to note that I did not want to respond plainly. I wanted them to feel my pain. But in my head I knew they already were prepared for how it would make me feel, and logically (not led by emotions), I knew I couldn’t make them feel worse. So I responded in the best way that I could to tell them that I was (or would be) ok.
Fast forward to the end of the day. My room was quiet. I was finally alone. I attempted to think of driving to release my thoughts, but my motivation for anything was depleted. Instead, I decided to put my head down on my desk and just feel and think. Just be in the moment, by myself, and let myself be. It took almost an hour, but it was exactly what I needed to do. I needed to let myself fade into myself. I needed to stop holding myself up and being strong for others. It’s ok to be weak. It’s ok to cry. It’s ok to acknowledge that what you feel absolutely sucks. But as I was thinking, it occurred to me where my thoughts were going, and like a lightbulb moment, I felt like I discovered a key to life. What I learned was this:
I was mad. I was angry. I was hurt. I was in pain. I was deeply saddened. I didn’t want to continue with my day. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just wanted life to stop. I knew these things. I felt these things strongly. I acknowledged them and let myself feel them, but I had to know why. Why was I so angry? Why was I so sad? Why did this hurt me so much? Though it may seem like the answers to this were obvious, I didn’t allow myself to take my first answers. Instead, I dug really deep. (Again, keep in mind this took an hour of self-discovering misery with my head down on a desk, broken and alone to figure this out. It’s not an easy process, but it was worth it.)
What I discovered was more than what I thought I would find. Was the news pleasant? No. I hated every bit of what that person admitted to me. My idea of perfection towards that person was blemished and it sucked. I was angry about the choice they had made. I was angry that it took them so long to admit it to me. But underneath all of that was the realization that even though it was ok for me to feel how I was feeling, it was not ok for me to not realize my role in the whole situation. I don’t mean that in any way I had any part of the bad decision this person had made. I literally knew nothing about it whatsoever. What I mean is that when there were times that I had to admit things to this person, this person did not skip a beat in treating me any differently or loving me any less. In fact, if I had replayed the situation in my mind, this person barely even blinked an eye and constantly told me that the past is the past and it was ok. I expected this person to be mad at me, but they didn’t show it whatsoever. And it was the same situation where what I had done was nothing done intentionally to them either. It was just bad decisions that needed to be admitted. And for someone to love me and accept me through my dark past, how could I not do the same for them? After all, they did tell me. After all, they were prepared to accept any reaction that I gave. After all, they were leaving their fate in my hands.
As I thought about this, it didn’t make me feel a ton better. I mean, yes, it did a little. But I’m going to sound selfishly honest that even still, that did not help as much as it probably should have. So I kept my head down and continued to dig. And the final thing that hit me was this: I was mad at that person for making the decision they did when I knew what the right decision was. Yet, in the past, I had been – multiple times – guilty of the exact same thing. It hurt me in such a strong way because hearing what they had done caused me to relive what I had done as well. I began to beat myself up over it as people had in the past. I began to tell myself that I deserved what this person had done even though it was never done intentionally to me in the first place. No wonder I wasn’t feeling better because I was bringing myself down over the situation more than the situation even called for! That person wasn’t meaning to hurt me, yet I was hurting myself. It’s sometimes amazing (good and bad) how our brain connects things. It’s like our past is stored in our brain, waiting to be brought out by any similar situation we experience. So many times we can think of personal stories that relate to situations we hear of, even if it’s not to the same magnitude. Sometimes, we think a lot of ourselves whether we mean to or not.
At that moment, I had to stop myself. I was mad at this person for doing the right thing of telling me the truth (which, partially, rightfully so) when in reality, I was the one beating myself up and hurting myself the most. That person wasn’t my true enemy, I was. After calling myself out on what I was doing, I realized that no, I did NOT deserve this. No, I did not deserve to be hurt. No, I did not always make the best decisions in my past, but I did not deserve to have those decisions put on me again to punish me for what I had done. No, I did not deserve to hear this bad news or to even have it exist. And as weird as this may sound, those thoughts were the most freeing thoughts that finally started to break the anger. The truth is, I couldn’t stop the hurt. The truth sucked no matter how you look at it. Bad news is just bad news. I didn’t have to be completely happy. But I did need to realize that it was ok for me to be sad and angry WITHOUT having to deserve to feel that way. I did need to realize that this person did not DESERVE for me to make them feel worse when they already regretted what they had done. This person was hurting because they knew they had hurt me, and as much as it bothered me, I knew this person cared so much that their pain was most likely equal to mine because I knew this person understood.
I feel like this is kind of a difficult thing to explain without being able to experience it with you. But it was the thoughts, the realizations that made this better. When all of these things finally trickled down and started to make sense, I knew I had to get it out. Hence, here I am. I feel like sometimes, we are so good at reacting and hiding how we actually feel that we forget to actually tell ourselves that it’s ok to feel how we feel, and we forget to take time for ourselves so that we can actually learn to swim through those dark thoughts and emotions. We don’t have to hide but we do need to understand and choose what to do. It’s ok for things to take time and it’s often better if they do.
Later on, I met up with this person. I’m a very facial-reacting person. It was obvious by the look of my eyes that I had been hurt badly and had been crying. I couldn’t hide that. But with the resolve in my heart to respect this person for admitting things to me, and with love in my heart for knowing that this person was probably crying about the situation too, I determined to try to smile and tell them it was ok. Was it easy? Not really. I still was sad. I still was hurt. We hugged. We cried. But at that moment, I knew it was ok to hurt together, because that also meant that we could heal together. We both had to experience the pain. We both had to support each other as much as we could. We both had to decide that we were going to get through it together, and that’s the beautiful part. As much as the hard days are hard, the healing process is like nothing in this world. When two people, whether friends, family members, or especially as a couple, when two people are able to take a situation and deal with it united, together, unwilling to let the other suffer alone, magical things happen. The healing that takes place grows a stronger bond than was there before. The love grows deeper. The appreciation is stronger. Though it takes time, it’s a process worth pursuing.
Two items came to mind as I was reflecting over this healing process. One being broken bones. I have been told that bones heal stronger after they are broken (for healthy individuals of course). This amazed me. But if we think that the bone knows what broke it the first time and is then preparing to be stronger for the next time it happens, it’s easy to see how this analogy applies to this situation. When two people are broken over something that happens and they are able to successfully go through the healing process, it is unlikely that same event will happen again and if it does (so long as it’s not stupidity repeating itself), you will be a stronger unit to confront it together.
The second being Kintsugi pottery. This is pottery that has been broken, but has been sealed back together with gold. The cracks are referred to as the scars, and the scars are nothing short of beautiful gold. Being broken hurts more than anything. I would take physical pain over emotional pain any day. But that healing process of being put take together, making a bond that was stronger than before, is as beautiful, as valuable as the gold that holds the Kintsugi pottery together.
This was a long post. I applaud you for making it here. It is my greatest hope that somehow these words may have helped you in some way. It is my hope that you will understand that we don’t have to fight this world alone. We are all here, living in this spherical space together. May we strive to be there for each other. May we learn that our feelings are ok, but it’s our thoughts that we need to keep in check. May we remember to slow down before reacting and may we never stop seeking to know ourselves better. We can make it through everything that comes our way. God has designed us to be strong people. Even when we feel like we can’t make it all alone, He is still there with you. He will never pull His love from you. You are loved my friends. I am praying for you!
Calm in Christ and Fitness 