Clawing Through The Pain

WHY CAN’T WE INVEST IN OURSELVES IN ORDER TO BE BETTER?

“A cynic knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” -Lord Darlington

Pain sucks. Our society has no real clue how to deal with it. In trying to reduce pain our pharmaceutical industry has created an opioid crisis because we just want to be comfortable. We cannot stand pain. This is true for both physical and mental pain. Drugs, alcohol, sex, or anything else that we can fixate or leverage ourselves to that reduces pain is our shield. We want to feel comfortable and life sometimes makes us uncomfortable.

The trick is recognizing this. The challenge is then not caving in to the immense desire to reduce the pain. Therapy can help. Trying to even reduce the frequency of use helps. But something has to help. Looking at our species and our US society it is frighteningly obvious how much pain is there. Obesity, homelessness, rampant behavioral health shortfalls, heroin, meth, prescriptions sold illegally, prescriptions given legally but without comprehensive treatment plans, sex addiction, it is all around us and we have become numb to it (Xanax helps).

I have pain. Not much physical these days (thanks physical therapy) but lots on the mental side. And it is time to talk about it. I’ve buried a brother, a mother, all grandparents, a few friends, and so on. I knew too much loss at too young an age. But I am not special here. Too many of us have suffered loss beyond what we deserve or have the constitution to withstand. It doesn’t give us an excuse to check out. That is unfair to those that depend on us, and to ourselves.

It’s damn hard to see that when you are mired in it. You feel that your worth no longer exceeds the threshold of pain you can withstand or come back from. Enter the behavioral modifications we make to survive. They get us by but they don’t really work all that well. We get through the meetings and the PTA meetings. But then we hop in a bottle, pill, pipe, person, or whatever we can find to shield us from it all. It DOES NOT fix a single thing. It buys us another day.

Putting one foot in front of the other is an admirable thing in times of trouble. But to be this sad? What are we doing wrong? We are skipping the hard work. We are looking only at the price and not the value. We are cynical curmudgeons who’d rather be a landfill fire for years rather than suffer a bonfire for a short time. The price does not explain the willful sacrifice of the value. And in the process we hurt those we explicitly don’t want to.

We need to pull it together and crawl through the pain. We need to smell it, hear it, feel it, taste it, throw it up, hear it, and see it. We need to shed the tears. There are times it feels like pulling oneself naked across a cheese grater. But if we don’t face it and release it, it will kill us eventually like an agonizing undiagnosable cancer. Reach out and find the resources to help. Groups, counselors, therapists, IOP Centers, or whatever you deem to be a treatment (and provided it is not another crutch masquerading a treatment). I use journals a lot and they help me to track my thinking patterns and look for the flawed pathways. From this I learn my triggers and avoid them. I tell people what I can and cannot give. I am learning to say no. I am learning not to set such stretch goals for myself that success is completely impossible. And in some instances I am learning to love myself. But I have a long way to go. I will have to crawl through a river of shit before I come out clean on the other side. But I now believe I am worth it. And so are you.