All of this has me thinking a lot about the lengths I could go to to outrun pain, which are considerable. I can’t imagine slapping a kitten or stealing a car, but my mind along with the rest of me would toddle up desert mountains without water for pain relief.
When I consider the times in my life when physical pain has ruled the roost — those three natural childbirths, a horrendous bout with an upper G.I. bleed once, and a history of dancing with migraines since I was a teenager — I know that when I’m in the grip of something painfully gripping, I would easily beg at the altar of pharmaceuticals for anything to take that pain away, and if that’s not possible, put me to sleep until it’s over. I have no doubt that had I given birth in a conventional hospital rather than a marvelous free-standing birthing center, I would have happily called out, “yes, please!” if an epidural was offered, forgetting my commitment for as healthy a birth as possible for the baby.
Then I consider the kind of chronic pain so many people I know live with — constant back agony, heart-numbing depression, myriad sharp pain throughout the body without rhyme or reason, and so many other physical and mental states equivalent to the ROUS (Rodents of Unusual Size) in The Princess Bride. There’s also the pain of the social body born of prejudices and biases: constant attacks on the self for not being white or straight or thin or whatever else enough. Lately, there’s the immense and needless pain of what is being done to thousands of migrant children, locked in cages without food or bedding, alone or crowded without enough ventilation or tenderness to survive on without incurring damage. We may not be experiencing such pain directly, but that’s the thing about pain: knowing it in enough intimacy often helps us tilt open the door of our own heart so that we can better see and respond to the pain of others.
My 12 days of surgery and migraine tussles suck of course, but perspective tells me it’s just a drop in the fuck-it bucket of what so many others are going through right now, whether it’s a six-year-old Guatemalan boy trying to keep a toddler fed on a concrete floor in Texas, a neighbor down the street carrying the shattered pieces of her grieving heart to the empty bed tonight, or someone who cuts me off in traffic because he was up most of the night with shoulder pain.
“Oh, for the relief of pain!” is a human chorus, coming back around at every turn if we look widely and listen deeply enough. What those of us harboring pain would do to relieve it is just as vast and complicated, and although this is surely what I always warned my students against — vague generalizations — I’m vaguely generalizing that a lot of pain in this world is fed by what we do or try to do to relieve the root of suffering. The opiate crisis, a rash of suicides, our collective issues with over-consumption that severely and negatively impact our climate and even our own survival — they all create ripples of pain, often without resolving the original pain or with replacing it with something even more vexing.
But that’s the thing: not all pain can be relieved. Some of the Turning Point writers I work with live with acute and constant pain from years of harsh chemotherapy or progressive neurological diseases. Some of my friends, surviving without beloved partners or parents or siblings, carry that vivid emptiness with them daily. Some of the people who brush past me in the food co-op or bank are hurting in an alphabet of pain most people can’t imagine.
All we can do is say it: I’m hurting. All we can do is ask: please help, or please just sit here with me cursing this embodied moment of sharp edges. All we can tell ourselves is, “Yup, it’s bad now, but I have hope it will be better tomorrow,” even if we’re repeating this refrain tomorrow. And all we can say is “I love you” to the world, even if temporarily disguised as a smiling nurse and anesthesiologist on the small island on what hurts surrounded by the bigger beauty of life.
Please support me creating a lot more writing, transformative writing workshops, and a new podcast series on the power of our stories! You can support me on Patreon, get cool perks and weekly inspirations for your creative life for as little as $3/month. More here.
Comments