Avoiding and Accepting Pain (continued)

 

I could hide behind rage and hopelessness and still not have to deal with the well of pain that existed within me. Even now, when I think about the tragic events that occurred my first initial reaction is to go back to those moments in my mind when I realized at 14 that I was being raped and I fought and screamed my anger until I was unable to fight any longer. I still want to scream.

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The first real crack in my armor came after I began having my children. The pure joy of creating my own family was truly a miracle. I could have a family filled with love rather than the fear I grew up with as a child. My first marriage was filled with ups-and-downs. My husband slowly became alcoholic and drug-addicted in front of my eyes. I felt despair but still did not cry. Instead, rage became my familiar.

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I found that I couldn’t let love in without it continuing to open up long forgotten and rejected emotions. As I raised my children, when they felt pain, I felt pain. When they felt fear, I felt fear. Gradually, I was unable to compartmentalize those feelings with them and it began leaking over to my own feelings separate from their growth.

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The pain was unimaginable. As it became triggered, it would be exponentially out of proportion with what was happening in the moment. It was the flip-side to the anger I had felt and just as intense. It would, after a period of time, disappear back into its compartment as quickly as it had surfaced.

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I gradually began to understand that where anger and rage had never made anything better, spending time with pain – however fleeting in the beginning – was relieving and almost medicinal for me. I began to understand that to offset the extreme emotions, both around anger and pain, I would have to associate those feelings with those long-ago traumas. I had to learn to allow myself those feelings in accordance with what is happening in the moment. I accepted the pain.