Pain

I'm back home in sunny Arizona. I've been thinking about all the things going on in my own life and the lives of those around me. While I was in California last week, I couldn't keep my mind on the here and now. My thoughts were on a dear friend at home who was, and still is, going through a hard time. Due to my lack of focus, I smashed my toes a few times, fell and screwed up my knee, smacked the wall in the dressing room and bruised my hand, and the one time I fell while ice skating, I injured my shoulder. All that physical pain and still my mind was elsewhere. My mind remains somewhere else even now and I find it difficult to focus on my writing. All that pain and I continue to be controlled by my thoughts and the pains in my heart and mind. The pain of separation from a loved one and fears for him and the things he has been going through without me, even though it is a delusion to think that I could truly help if I were near him.

I think it's safe to say that that kind of pain, psychic, mental, emotional pain, is much worse to cope with than physical pain. I've realized that I'd prefer physical pain any day of the week. But then again who wouldn't choose a broken toe over the loss of someone you love? Who wouldn't choose a migraine over heartbreak or fear of loss or disappointment? Maybe I've only truly felt emotional pain. Maybe there are physical pains that are worse. If there are, then I have no urge to experience them, because I know that there is no way that I could survive a physical pain as strong and drawn out as the heart wrenching, soul stabbing emotional pain that I have felt.

I've felt the pain of loss when family members have died. I've cried, I've talked to them (whether they could hear me or it was all in my head is irrelevant), I've shut down, and I've found my way back into regular day to day life. It's much the same when someone breaks your heart. Cry, curse them, rationalize their behavior, come to terms with the loss, figure out what has been learned during the relationship, and return to day to day reality. I'm not saying that these are quick processes. It took me about two years after my mother's death to be fully functional again. And heartbreak...typically takes about half the length of the relationship to snap back. My longest relationship was two years long and it took me about a year to find myself again.

After one of these heartbreaks (and after being told by a male friend that my emotions were irrational) I asked all my friends and searched on the internet for ways to cope with extreme stress and emotional pain. Most of them gave the helpful and enlightened answer of "I don't know." I received recommendations of prayer, meditation, talking to friends, writing, creating something artistic, and gardening. Truly the best answer that I received was exercise. So I trained myself, when I was sad or angry, to go walk the dog. Luckily the dog knew the route pretty well, because he would lead me on a two mile walk and back home again regardless of how blind with anger I was or whether or not I could see through my tears. Usually by the end of this walk I had some answers or a solution or at least recognition from myself that such and such was a problem with his thinking or I could see that I had been irrational. I think that our families and school systems have done a great disservice to us all in not teaching better coping skills.

Coping skills such as turning to food to bury our emotions steal years from our lives and leave us with no understanding of how to handle strong emotions like anger, fear, and grief. Turning to alcohol or drugs just erases the problem for a short time, but then it comes back as we sober up and is either bigger or has brought some more problem friends with it. During high stress situations and emotional breakdowns, thoughts of suicide bubble to the surface and are pushed back down by something or there would be a lot less humans on this planet. (In my head it's just logic, ending my life would not solve anything in my life, it would just stop me from living.) People on both sides of an argument have to realize that stepping away from the battle zone and taking a run doesn't mean that anyone is running away from the problem, but only that you stepped out for some perspective.

Getting a new perspective or another point of view or hearing what someone else would do or has done in the same situation is a great help. Sometimes it only helps one to see that the relationship is really over or that they are gone forever and that there is nothing anyone can do to change "gone."  Gone is just gone and our lives must continue to move forward without that person that we loved.