The Big Pain

I was reading about initiation rituals, dear reader, and how these are sorely misunderstood in our Capitalist hell. 

We are certainly NOT in need of great pain. We do however usually lack a meaningful community–one that will hear us and celebrate our return–one that will mourn our losses in a way that feels honest.

We are too busy working and distracting ourselves to hold each other in the ways that would solidify our healing. We are too preoccupied to see to it that the initiation experience is brought to a close. And so we are left, my dear, sweet reader, with the empty pain of outgrowing ourselves.

After a Big Hurt, our instinct is to find a place to process both the pain and the learning–this is a community. Without sharing our experience–either intentionally or out of necessity–we can’t seem to end the chapter of suffering that forced us out of outdated versions of ourselves. We become obsessed with licking our wounds–with retribution. We cause ourselves more pain. We inflict it, too, on whoever’s in range.

To fight this, we try with little success to jam ourselves back into the lives we’ve outgrown. With the Big Pain we’ve felt and the newness we now know is possible, we attempt to crawl back to the comfort of not knowing.

But Big Pain needs big change, my lovely reader. After something this dramatic, we know the future with certainty enough to go and get it. We can’t do this though, no matter how badly we want it, if we don’t in some capacity share the story of how we came to see change.

I find this idea both intuitive and impossible. We are rewarded for strength but never for failures–though of course we learn much more from skinned knees than a great haircut.

I didn’t understand this in so many words until this morning. But! I realized I’ve been trying to do this for years and years. This is where you come in.

I didn’t want to share my story “for real”–I didn’t think I had a community to share it with. Also and perhaps more importantly, I wasn’t done going through it. Fuck all, I’m still going through it. But I started writing about my Big Pain anyway, because it was too uncomfy to keep inside. I wanted to see if sorting it out on a page would help me move on.

It did–kind of. Sharing my story held my shortcomings up to a mirror. I’ve asked myself what I’ve learned from her–I’ve shared just about every one of my flaws with you–save a few bad hair days and some vices I’d nipped before I knew you. It wasn’t until I did that I started to let myself be different.

I’m really deeply moved that I’ve found you, dear reader, even if it was by accident. It was selfish really–I was writing for myself. It’s so cool though that forcing myself to reenter my past has brought me to a group of people willing to accept me as I am now.

This whole recovery thing didn’t stick until I started talking about what hurt with you. I hear your stories too, dear reader. I feel for you.

I am here to listen too, don’t forget that.

I love you so much. Oh, it’s a lot of love.

-AL