Tag: Pain

The Beginning of Trauma

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I’ve been crying. A lot more than I used to. Twice a week, maybe five. 

I’ve been crying because I don’t know how to process the experiences I endured as the year ended and a new year began. 

I was looking forward to it. A new year. I always do. It’s as stupid as a change in the date but it feels new. It feels like it’s the first page of a new book. Fresh, crisp and giddy. 

Flashback to November 2022, I was sitting in the living room, laughing at him. He cracked another joke that only I would find as funny. I paused and stared, “Is this the happiest we’ve been? Feels like we’re going through our best phase, aren’t we?” Because we were. We had never been closer. We had never been happier. We had never been more content. Maybe I jinxed it. 

December 2022 introduced people to my life that I believed in my heart were nice and good. I’m not that person. I have always believed people are bad and selfish. I would often tell my sister, as long as you believe people are not nice by default, when someone shows you their true colors, you’re never shocked. It’s expected. But then if someone turns out to be good, you are genuinely surprised and happy. Much rather be surprised positively than negatively. I should’ve listened to my own words. 

I believed the people were good. That they were here because they cared. That they were joining us to experience the abundance of love and joy that our lives had to give. Especially after the November we had had, I knew they could not ignore the insanely positive atmosphere that our house held. Despite my husband and I being sick in turns for the better part of last year. We had found our happy place. We were content and in love. Everybody saw it. They would too right?

I was wrong. 

Ours was a whirlwind romance. On week two, when we decided to get married, I told him “I’ve been lucky. People always treat me differently. I am liked and loved by those around me and I don’t know how to not have that. I don’t know how to function in a world where people don’t like me. If you’re not comfortable with something, please come to me. Don’t just dislike me from a corner. I can’t take it.”

Perhaps dislike would’ve been a better energy than the one that came off of our visitors. 

I discovered early that the people staying with us were not here with good intentions. But I tried to convince myself that wasn’t true. Because family cannot be harsh, can they? Family loves each other. They’re honest and straightforward. They don’t talk in the third person to share hatred or criticise. Do they?

Turns out they do. Turns out that family could do more. Turns out, family can pretend, be deceitful, and hurt. Turns out, family can destroy your soul while playing on your trust. 

Turns out, families are no different from human beings around the world. And I didn’t take the advice I dished out so willingly. Human beings by default are mostly bad and selfish. Surprise yourself with the good, not the bad. 

I surprised myself with the bad. And then they got worse. My mental health crashed and they ridiculed me for it and the worst was an understatement because what is worse than worst? I’d describe the end of my year and the beginning of a new one as that. 

My life hasn’t been easy. It’s taken a lot of fighting and resilience and just the ability to claw my way out of really low points. But it all paled in comparison. Trauma became a word I had to acknowledge. How do you explain trauma as a result of a fight with family?

But trauma it is. It continues to grow. Every day. The bad people are gone but the broken pieces remain. My heart races at things I enjoy doing. But not with joy. With scattered comments that were hateful and harsh. My weeks are filled with small doses of panic attacks. Combined with a sense of humiliation for my stupidity. For believing people were nice. For trusting someone beyond my intuition. For giving someone the benefit of the doubt when I knew something wasn’t right. 

I am ashamed for going against my gut feeling. For having real conversations that I shouldn’t have had with someone that would use it against me. For allowing all this to continue to torment me. But there’s no way out. 

So I cry. It was everyday. It’s now every other day.  I hope it slows down but I don’t know how it can. The things I would do to distract, the things I would do to switch this energy that somehow surrounds me every minute of every day have been tainted with words they shouldn’t have said. 

Everything I touch feels like a reminder of a bully. The trauma remains, unwavering. 

The world talks a lot about trauma and anxiety. There are different means to fix it. Google can give you ten pages full of solutions. I know what fixes me when I’m down. But nobody tells you what to do when the things you love are triggers now. What do I do when my mental health getting worse is a trigger in itself because it reminds me of the mockery of my anxiety?

I know I shouldn’t give their words the power. But it has gone past my control. I loathe the things I loved and find it impossible to laugh at his jokes like I used to. I’m left wondering if maybe I’m not good enough for that laughter. For that joke. For him. 

Perhaps not all is lost though. It’s the first time I’ve written in a while. My words come from pain – the kind that’s wrapped around me like a safety blanket, leaving me feeling anything but safe. 

My own family listen to me cry every day and continue to offer their shoulder each time. My cousins expressed rage at what they believed was unfair and unacceptable behavior from people who didn’t know me at all. My friends formed a circle around me, allowing me to fall back on them, reassuring me every time I fell that I am not who I was being described to be. That my emotions were not invalid. That my mental health was not “a sign of low emotional intelligence.” 

My husband tries everyday to hold my hand and walk me out of this terrible spiral they’ve pushed me into. 

In finding the bad,  I realized the good around me. The people that made me forget that human beings aren’t all bad are reminding me of it again. 

I’m trying to absorb it. Trying to do the things that have been tainted. It’s not working yet but I hope it does. I hope I’ll wake up one morning and do the thing I love and it won’t remind me of harsh words. It won’t send my heart racing. It won’t break me down. 

I’ll wake up one morning and it’ll be better than November was. Than November could have ever been. 

I’ve been crying. A lot more than I used to. With anxiety, with hurt, with pain. One day I won’t. One day I’ll heal. I’ll wear my scars as a memory of the battle I got through. 

One day. Until then…

A Painful Addiction

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Like so many things I’ve talked about here before, this, too, is a secret well-kept. One I’ve often wondered if others have been through.
Doesn’t every addiction have company?

We were texting and it was a fight like all else. There was shouting. There were rude things. I told myself I’m going to block him. Then came the text I’d dreaded, right below his name – Typing…

Do you know that hammering in your heart when you’re saying goodbye? The one where you know it’s for the better while you wish something had been different all along? That’s how I felt. I stared at that word.

I knew in my heart I had to walk away. Block him now and never have this conversation again. But I stalled. I heard my mind tell me, “He’s going to type something hurtful. This will not be kind to your soul. He is angry beyond comprehension. Being nice isn’t what he wants right now. Walk away. You will break down over the words he’s typing. Press the button. Block him now and walk away.”

But I stalled. Because I wanted to see them. I wanted to see the names he would call me. The words he wanted to throw at me. I wanted to feel just how much he resented me. I wanted to feel my heart crash. My emotions sink. I wanted to hurt from within. To curl up and sob over the physical and emotional turmoil the words he typed would bring to me.

And for the first time, I noticed it. I noticed an addiction.

One I’d never known before.

Nobody talks about things like this. People don’t tell you this is a possibility. And maybe it isn’t. But it was there. Pulsing through me with a need that words cannot explain.

I called my friend and told him about it. I told him what I’d just realized about myself. And the more we spoke, the more instances I recalled.

Like the time I sat in a car with a boy I was dating and waited for him to tell me what I already knew. He’d been cheating on me. But I wanted to hear him say it. To hear him say he was sick of me. To hear him say he’d upgraded. Even when I knew the stinging pain I’d feel right after.

And the time I had a fight with my father and, instead of walking away, I stayed so I could hear him tell me how disappointed he was to have me for a daughter. I knew he wouldn’t mean the words he’d say. I knew my heart would still believe it. And when it did, I knew it’d shatter into a million different pieces. But I stayed to hear him say it.

Or the time I had the opportunity to talk about it all. To end the misery of being the messenger in a broken marriage. To finally be just a child again. The time I chose to stay quiet. To not end what I knew would consume who I am for the rest of my life.

The time I chose to stand beside someone I knew was breaking from within. I wanted to absorb what he was letting out. To feel what he was trying to get rid off.

Because an addiction doesn’t have to be material. An addiction doesn’t need a physical form. It can be something bigger. Something more disturbing. Something more life shattering.

An addiction can be a feeling. Of heartbreak. Of emotional damage. Of misery.

An addiction can be something you’d never consider.

An addiction to an emotion.

Wanting to be hurt. To be emotionally ruined. Wanting to hear the words they’ll regret in the morning. Finding comfort in places you know you’ll crash. With people you know will wreck you. An addiction to an emotion so strong, it breaks you. Piece by piece. Until there’s nothing left of you.

And I..

I am addicted to Pain.

And I don’t know if someone out there feels this way too. I don’t know if this feeling is common. If it’s normal.

But it exists. Deep within me. And I can’t shake this off.

So there’s no positive end to this post. I’m not going to tell you how I plan on beating this or how I’m going to work on getting better. I don’t know if there is a way to get better.

But I’m talking about this because I know.

I know this addiction. And it’s not easy. It doesn’t make sense to many. It’s a battle everyday. A battle where you repeat to yourself over and over again to walk away. A battle you always lose.

So if you’re out there. If you’re feeling the way I do. If you’re addicted to the one thing everyone resents and avoids. I want you to know you’re not alone.

I want you to know that I feel it too. Everyday. Every moment. And I know how it consumes you. How it’s destroying you. How ridiculous it can sound. How real it can feel.

I know this painful addiction.

It’s mine too.

 

 

 

 

 

P.A.I.N

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Pain. That’s probably one of the most dreaded words on the planet. Pain. The sound of it makes me cringe. It’s emotional. It’s physical. It can numb you from head to toe and take away your ability to think or act rationally. Pain – that’s the word. But what is it really?

The doctors often say, “Rate the pain you’re feeling from 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest.” I have never said 10. Because I know nothing I will ever feel is 10. There’s always something worse right around the corner. It’s like education. The older you get, the worse it becomes. But you also understand that everything in the past was just a preparation for the present. And the present is preparing you for the future.

Because pain is evergrowing.

Like the moment you watch your perfect family crumble and fall. Your world stops and you think the worst has happened, only to realize that it is a permanent fall and can never be rebuilt.

Like feeling hope for the first time in years when someone promises not to walk away and watching that hope crash as you sit on your bed, clutching your phone and sobbing silently.

Like giving up on a dream. Giving up on your five year plan for no fault of yours.

Like heartbreak. You think you’ve figured it out after the first time. You understand what it is. You can handle it. And then the second one happens and it’s ten times more than what you could have ever imagined.

Like the very second after you’ve said “I love you” for the first time and the person on the other end pauses. Your hope sinks with every tick on the clock and yet you feel so unprepared for the “Hmm” that you think you heard in a hallucination but was reality.

Like that little eight year old girl sitting on a couch while her aunt called her “a brave kid” and she grinned – a fake grin – to cover up the stab she felt deep inside her. The need to be anywhere but there. To wake up from the nightmare. To have someone tell her that this is not her life, this is not her childhood.

Pain. When you’re four, you think the scratch on your feet is horrible. Then you get bruised and it leaves a scar. Eventually it becomes ligament tears. And then broken bones. One fine day, you’re struggling to get out of bed because every part of your body hurts. Everything feels painful. But it doesn’t mean the world is over. You don’t give up on school because your classes got harder. Like you don’t stop living because the pain got worse. You go on. You learn to put one foot in front of the other and walk it off.

Because sometimes, pain is good.

Pain lets you appreciate happiness. It teaches you the value of those small moments in life. It helps you learn the concept of empathy. It brings people with similar battles together. It gives you wisdom. It makes you stronger. And when looked at right – Pain gives purpose to life. Maybe pain was created, not to sink us, but to let us help others who are going through the same thing. Maybe pain was meant to irk a positivity that I have failed to see for a very long time now. It’s the only thing you can do about pain without creating a more traumatic experience for the people who love you. Maybe that’s why the word exists to explain that emotion.

Maybe PAIN is just an abbreviation of – Positive. Attitude. Is. Necessary.

Maybe that’s why, like positivity, pain cannot be killed. Pain cannot be willed away. Pain cannot be destroyed. Pain cannot be ignored.

“Pain Demands To Be Felt”

– John Green

Inspired by the comment by Ceolittle :

“I was feeling down today kinda lost what the real meaning of life is all about through all the pain”

Beauty…

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We all have those unanswered questions we wouldn’t dare ask in fear that someone might call us stupid. Here’s mine : What is beauty? A perfect winged eyeliner? A Picasso painting? A genuine person? A generous heart? Why? Can anybody really explain beauty?

Wikipedia tried : Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction.

Pleasure. Have you read The Fault in our Stars by John Green? That book just about killed me. It was in no way a pleasurable experience. But I thought that book was absolutely beautiful. I cannot explain why.

I decided that the best time to get my question out there without being labelled stupid was now. Hence I started with the closest of friends and family – “I’m doing research for my blog. What, according to you, is beauty?”

I got the typical answers – Beauty is my girlfriend. Beauty is the love of my life. Beauty is a genuine person. Beauty is a loving heart. Beauty is confidence. Beauty is perfection. Beauty is anything that makes you feel good.

Then I asked them “How do you say that? What exactly makes you use the word ‘beauty’ towards those things?”

I got one answer : “I don’t know. I can’t explain.”

That’s the thing. Nobody knows. I was almost on the verge of giving up when someone I know gave me her definition of beauty :

“By the magic of sight , anything which on looking makes me feel fresh.
By the magic of my palette, anything that tastes and gives me the yummy yum yum
By the magic of my nostrils, anything that gives the fragrence which I want to capture”
I didn’t ask her how she came to that conclusion because to me, that answer was beautiful.

She might not have nailed it, but her explanation was something I couldn’t question. Beauty was her accepting the simplicity of the complex things in and around us. Beauty was that she noticed something no other person I know did. Beauty was that she found it magical.

I wish I was someone that could figure it out and give you scientific facts. But I can only talk about what I’ve observed.

When I look at Miranda Kerr, I think she is so cute. When I look at Meryl Streep, I think she is dynamic and utterly gorgeous. But when I look at Angelina Jolie, I think she is beautiful. There was a time when I hated her. But as I realized just how much she gives to the world, I began to love her.

There was an Indian celebrity that I used to love. I thought his talent was unbelievably amazing. His grace so utterly beautiful. A few years ago, his personal life took a hike. His behavior during that period was everything I stand against. From that day, every time I see him do what he does best, I see an asshole. I think to myself “Look at him, trying to cover up his act with grace. He can’t fix what he’s broken.”

I’ve noticed that our perception of a person or a thing changes when the story about them changes. I used to love Romeo and Juliet. It was the most beautiful love story on the planet and an incredible one too. Then I saw the movie Shakespeare in Love. The idea (which I highly doubt is true but is the story of the movie) that Romeo and Juliet was based on an affair that Shakespeare had, ruined the book for me. Ruined the love they shared. Whenever I pick up the book, I no longer feel like I’m reading a beautiful love story. I feel like I’m reading a scandal report of how a man cheated on his wife.

Our emotions define the beauty we see. When the girl we hate looks absolutely perfect, we don’t see beauty. We say “I cannot stand her and her perfection! It’s so fake.” But when the person we love looks like crap, we see a beauty we can’t define.

Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. It is in his heart. It is in his emotions. It is in his love.

Beauty is the book that makes his heart yearn. Beauty is the song that reminds him of happiness. Beauty is his family and a place he calls ‘home.’ Beauty is the girl he fell head over heels for. Beauty is his first pet. Beauty is the way his mother takes care of him. Beauty is the doll he’s had on his bed since he was two. Beauty is the unforgettable connection he had with the girl he met at a party weeks ago.

It might be painful. It might hurt you. But if you love it, you’ll find beauty in it. We can’t all love the same person, the same book or the same movie. There arises the difference in our ideas of beauty.

John Green had me falling in love with Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace. He had me falling in love with their stories. With their personalities. And no matter how much that book kills me, I will always love it and I will always think it was beautiful.

Because love doesn’t always come from a place of joy or pleasure. Sometimes love comes from pain and hurt.

And hence we call it Beautiful…