Emotional traumas from my past have left me so averse to pain that my attempts to avoid it have been desperate and erratic. I feared I was not strong enough to bear any additional disappointment: to try and fail, to lose love, to trust another person and come to regret that decision. I was terrified I would be broken.
And so, when I felt the slightest discomfort involving other people I immediately recast my feelings for them (which introduced the vulnerability) into a problem to solve. I did not question the threat: the discomfort I felt was sufficient evidence of an attack. Even a small incompatibility or irritation caused this reaction, and I did not even take time to assess the magnitude of the injury I suffered before shifting my energy into fortifying my defenses. Or mounting an offense of my own in return.
I immediately asked, how can I avoid feeling this way in the future? What can I do differently? The answers I’d grown used to giving gave me temporary relief at a terrible long-term cost: “I can care less. I can become less invested. I can lash out at these people to let them know this is not ok. I can disappear from their lives and then they’ll never be able to hurt me again.”
It was like tearing down a house because I didn’t like the color of paint in the kitchen. It was thinking that it’s always possible—better—to start over, rebuild from scratch, and choose higher-quality materials the next time to get closer to perfection. It was being unwilling to work with what I have. It was failing to acknowledge the grays instead of calling them black or white. It was ungenerous. Judgmental. Hypocritical. (For don’t I know better than anyone else the extent of my flaws, and hope that someone would accept me nonetheless?) But I maintained the illusion that people should mesh with me in every aspect I value, and if they didn’t, that they were too dangerous to keep around, or to keep close.
I’ve caused so much damage to others, thinking this way. I’ve lost relationships I valued so much, and should have valued more. I ignored perspective and justified all my actions as a necessary form of self-protection. This was wrong. Thinking this way is wrong.
I am not so easily broken. I am strong. I have been very comfortable for a long time, and I have become very strong. I am not a delicate flower, cringing from the sunlight and expecting anyone who notices me to bring with them a heavy boot. I haven’t been that person for a long time. I can’t use self-protection to excuse what became my cruelty. I just got mean.
Today I will try something different. Today my heart cries out in anguish and my brain says “I will protect you, here’s what we’ll do....” This time, I say no. NO. Today, I will just feel it. I will not try to fix it with an old answer. I am not allowing myself the temporary relief that sets me up to repeat the same mistakes. My feelings will not be the basis for a troubleshooting exercise. The old answers won’t work this time. They haven’t worked for a while.
Don’t reframe it, craft a narrative to understand what happened, make a plan for the future, or try to analyze the feeling. Sit with it. No more hypothesizing. No logic, no analytics. Sit with it.
I sit with this pain and acknowledge it as a part of me. I will not disown it or minimize it. I will not rush to distract myself. I will not pretend it doesn’t matter, or that I can’t take it. I can feel it, and I do. It’s miserable, but it’s real. It’s mine and it is me, just as being strong—and sometimes malicious—has been me. I ache, I am damaged. I hurt. I’ll sit with it.
I don’t know where to go from here, and that’s okay. At least I’ll be here with myself, honest and whole, and not hurrying away to a new destination that will turn into the same places I’ve already been. For a little while, I’ll sit with it.