Emotional PAIN
EMOTIONAL PAIN
Sixth grade was the first year of school that I sort of enjoyed. At least it wasn't a freakish nightmare. I sat next to the first two humans I ever considerd friends. Over the summer break, one moved away, and the other died tragically. I found out about it by reading the newspaper. Apparently, he slipped while pole-vaulting across a rain-swollen creek and was carried away and drowned. It was quite a shock and a disappointment. I don't remember any grief counselors back then. I don't think we had them yet. I do think I could have used one though, if I would have had enough sense to speak to one, but I probably wouldn't have.
You don't really want to cause that sort of pain to people who care about you. And, you shouldn't keep what is hurting you bottled up and rotting inside you, either. Pain does not get better with age. The best revenge is always to live well. You must replace what is bad, with something good.
Bad old painful memories never go away, unless you replace them with a bunch of good new ones. You have to overwrite the file, or those memories return like ghosts to haunt and depress you, making you relive the same feelings of inadequacy and embarassment over and over again. If you want to stop falling in that hole, you have to fill it in.
Holes are caused by failed expectations. For example, you expected the road, to be much flatter and smoother, but in this one place, it wasn't. It let us down. That is what we call a hole. A crater in your expectations.
Cynicism and Nihilism are just an attempt to smooth out the ride by lowering our expectations and keeping them safely low. We tell ourselves that the road is always pretty crappy and we expected it to be three feet lower than it was anyway, or that it doesn't matter anyhow. So, hey, when we fall into a three-foot hole, well, the road only lived up to our dark expecations, and we therefore are supposed to be less shaken by the fall.
Tough and Hard. Sometimes we act out, trying to provoke as many holes as possible, in hopes that this the process will steel us and numb the pain, and get us more used to the jarring falls. Our solution is to become tough. It is our coping strategy for holes. "Listen," we boast, "I invite holes. Ain't no hole going to bother me, I live on the edge. Hit me with your best hole." "Life's a bitch and then you die anyway." You know the tune. Well, let me tell you something from experience. You don't really want to be tough. You just think you do. Things do not hurt any less if you are tough. No. They only seem to hurt less, because you hurt ALL the time. Please, think about that. Read it again, and let it sink in, and settle deeply in your brain. You do not really, ever, want to be tough.
Drugs don't fill holes. That is like trying to fill your hole with acid. Anything that makes your hole deeper when you wake up, is no solution. So,like, if you are depressed because there is no food in your refrigerator, for instance, and you take drugs, you can wake up to find out that someone stole your refrigerator. Sure, it makes you forget the pain of being in a hole, for awhile, but so does sleep. Most find that drugs, as a solution, do more damage than good.
What can we do then?
Well, first of all, no hole is just going to go away instantly. Sorry.
You always fall into holes much faster than you climb out the other side. Sometimes, you can't even see the other side yet, because falling into a hole can make you cry a lot.
Look at your feet, or your wheelchair, and take a step. Put yourself in motion.
I'm not kidding.
You have to start again somewhere. Do something to lift yourself higher than you were before.
You learned to walk this way. Remember? One step at a time. And you may not remember, but you fell and cried a lot doing it. There were times that you were so frustrated that you lost hope that you would ever learn to walk. It wasn't easy. You have forgotten. You replaced those bad memories of your pain and frustration then, with your later good memories of walking. You may have to fill in the hole with wobbly short steps, just like you once learned to walk.
Overcome inertia.
It takes more horsepower to move a sitting car to a speed of 1, than it does to maintain one that is already roaring along at a speed of 70. Don't wait for it to be easy. It's not. It gets easier, but you have to start first, and build momentum again.
Overcome your expectations.
Don't expect big results right away. Be happy making progress. That is called being content. And being content is, after all, a really wonderful place to be.
