Dealing With Pain
The different ways we deal with pain are fathomless and boundless.
Some of us are loud about it. Our grief simmers in our blood, lapping against the roofs of our mouths like the waves against the shore, and the only way to lessen the pressure is to speak. To let it all out. To scream it from the rooftops, this incredible injustice we've had to cope with. To finally share what's been bothering us, what's been weighing us down for so long. We survived and we want to shout about it.
Some of us take our pain and make art out of it. We write, or paint, or sing. We act, or sculpt, or dance. We use it to help others. To encourage people that are going through the same thing. We take something bad and turn it into something good. We take something that's been hurting us and turn it into something that makes us and others happy. We survived and we create.
Some of us deal with our trauma in silence. We keep it all in, feeling's bottled up, sorted into neat files, stored into boxes and shoved into the depths of our mind. From time to time, we retrieve these boxes and take a look at them. We do it at night, when we're alone, when there's no one around to watch us.
One day we might open up about the things that have happened to us. But only once we've learned to live with the boxes' contents long enough to know it's finally time to take them out with the trash and make space for new ones. We survived and we keep it to ourselves.
But these are not the only ways. We survived and sometimes respond with anger. We survived and sometimes don't know what to do but to try and suppress the memories of our darkest hours.
Who are we to say anyone's doing it wrong? Often we are too quick to judge. We see someone deal with their pain in a way that is different than ours and we assume that it's not right. As long as it helps us heal, how wrong can it be, really? Pain is not something we want in life, sure. We'd rather live without it.
But doesn't it unite us, no matter how differently we deal with it? Pain means we have one thing in common: we survive and we grow.
