ACCEPTANCE

Embracing the pain

Photo by Giulia Bertelli on Unsplash

I’ve recently been faced with a part of me that I’ve long hidden in the back of my mind, somewhere where the sunlight can’t reach and where it skulks around in the shadows. I have, with all my might, tried to paper over the cracks that this particular terror has been creating. I hear it scraping at the walls of its dungeon with long, yellowed fingernails. I ignored it for a long time, did “the work” on it, or so I thought. It’s funny how the things we pretend to have dealt with rise to the surface, splitting the waters of our minds and appearing out of the depths with their ugly, monstrous heads.

For years, I have been desperately trying to be “happy,” whatever that means. I think it’s different for everyone. I’ve spent hours working on myself, healing parts of me that have been wounded by trauma, releasing old emotions, the sadness, anger, fear, anxiety, and depression. Yet the pain returns, and each time it comes back, I do some more work, meditate on it, release it, but what I won’t do is accept that the wounds from which the pain arises are as much a part of who I am as the good stuff.

The pressure I’ve put myself under over the years to be “ok”, to live my life always striving for “happy” or “positive,” or any other adjective that accurately describes the unrealistic goals I’ve held for myself, has been enormous. There is nothing wrong with being positive, but when it becomes a chore, when the pressure to be happy all the time and live a perfect life weighs heavily on you, it no longer feels like happiness; it becomes a problem.

When I started realising that this was an issue, I didn’t know what to do to “fix” it. Something else I’m obsessed with! I felt a bit lost. Deep down, I knew my self-perception had to change.

I had, by all accounts, done everything right on the journey to living a happy, fulfilled life, as all the positivity Gurus tell us! I did the work, I meditated, I journaled, I read the self-help books, I quit my job to follow my dreams, but the pain still returned. At first, I thought I was doing something wrong, but then, slowly, because I am incredibly stubborn and won’t admit defeat, I had to concede and accept that maybe this is who I am. Ouch!

Yes, it’s been difficult to admit that I may have been ignoring great chunks of my being in an attempt to fulfil the ideal life that everyone keeps talking about. Here I have betrayed myself and that yellow-fingernailed, not so monstrous part of who I am.

Accepting that perhaps this pain will never go away, that there will be days when it comes to bite me on the ass, leaving me scarred and sore for days after, that I’m always going to have to face it, tend to it, sit in its frustrating, soul-aching fire as it scorches everything, strangely, leaves me feeling relieved. The fight to stay afloat in a rainbow of eternal happiness and never-ending positivity has come to an end. I am both the darkness and the light. I am joy and also pain. I don’t have to keep struggling through days when the darkness swamps me, and my mind feels as though it has been crushed inside a blackhole. I can acknowledge it and then move through the day from there, instead of pretending that I am high on life. This kind of honesty with myself is long overdue.

It has taken a while for me to realise that the pain may always be there. Of course, it doesn’t mean I will stop doing the work when issues arise, but it does mean that I will give myself a break and not put so much pressure on myself to have it sorted yesterday, so I can continue living in a state of pseudo positivity today. I realise that I have to slow down and acknowledge the pain and where it originates from, not continue to dismiss it as a nuisance. Owning this aspect of myself is allowing me to breathe. I feel a sense of freedom that I haven’t had before, and whilst it doesn’t take the pain away, it does mean I’m no longer fighting to keep it hidden. In accepting its presence in my life, maybe the battle is on the way to being won.

All my love,

Vickey.