Pain

How much death have you experienced in this life? Is there such a thing as a fair amount, and if so, how fair is it when a child dies before a parent?

I have chosen to give no warning about what may trigger you in this piece. While reading this you may feel uncomfortable and if you choose to think about a certain unpleasantness over and over again or to spiral into an unpleasant emotional space, remind yourself that the power to proceed lives within your choice.

This is me sharing with you compassionately.

Being alive is not only supposed to feel good and pleasant, or most always to your liking and desire. You are emotionally more resilient than you treat yourself. I hope you do not fear your hurt and pain.

Have you lost someone that you know or love recently? Or ever? Have you given honor to the hurt that you feel for them no longer being here? Life. Being alive hurts so much right now.

Life has been hitting heavy on my soul and for most, if not, all of the clients I work with as well. As a teenager in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, this is not how I imagined life to look. Believe it or not, I even imagined myself being a psychotherapist back then and had no clue how much hurt I would be helping people heal from. As I dig deeper into the hurt of those that sit across from me, I have learned that for some people life feels increasingly more painful and traumatizing. Have you thought about how it feels for you?

Have you become fatigued by senseless death at the hands of the emotional wounds of humans?

Stop for a second, slow yourself down and sit within your humanity.

Cognitively trying to grasp and hold onto all of what is happening around us right now can be overwhelming; however, it is absolutely without a doubt happening.

People are dying after contracting an invisible virus, fires and floods are consuming the lives of children, mounds and mounds of human beings are homeless and not feeling seen. Mourning social media induced murders and senseless suicides, quietly revisiting racist public hangings, fearing being victims of hate crimes, rapes or murders via homicide and the countless deaths that happen because people have simply lost control of their minds.

Digesting all of this can be challenging at best.

Today is your present day; our only reality. Trust yourself. You can and will be able to navigate the emotional state that you are in.

Have you become numb to what pains you? Are you paying attention to your humanity? Sometimes too much pain can make us want to escape, creating not only a disconnect from ourselves, but additional unpleasantness in agonizing ways.

Attempting to numb, ignore, deny or detach from our feelings is a surefire way to sink into madness. Do you feel mad? Not just an angry feeling, but do you have moments of being in disbelief of how different life is from what you thought it would be growing up? I do. Do the similarities between disappointment and sadness confuse you?

You will not receive any “how-to tips,” while reading this. The purpose of this piece is to share with anyone out there feeling deeply embedded in hurt and pain, that you are not alone in it.

There is so much solidarity in somberness right now and it sucks. It is also the reality of how things are unfolding at the moment; painfully.

Fearing pain creates more pain.

Please do not fear your hurt and pain, just feel it.