Learning from Pain

My opinion of how pain affects us. I wrote it after having a conversation with someone of a different opinion.

I have lived 18 fucked up years.

In that time, I have been happy, sad, depressed, lost, and suicidal. I have learned a lot in that time. I find that I have learned more from my pain than from my happiness. Some of the greatest life lessons I learned through pain. Yeah, sure, I was brought down and affected negatively by pain but I can’t let it stay that way. I can’t let the pain control me and forever hinder me and hold me back. I believe it to be a choice to let pain effect you positively or negatively.
I am in no way an optimistic person. I consider myself “pessimistically hopeful”. I have lost hope in life before- it landed me on the floor surrounded by blood. I didn’t understand then. I do now. In order to live and grow and cope with life you have to realize that though bad things happen and you suffer; your suffering is what makes you stronger. You learn from it and, hopefully, let it make a positive impact in your life.
I can only shed light on this belief through personal experience. I was raped at a very young age, and then again in my teenage years. I was abused and manipulated and used in every way possible. For many years, I let myself be the person those people who had hurt me made me believe I was. I let the pain get to me. I hid it and it tortured me. It still does to this day, but I’ve learned how to deal with that pain. I’ve learned that though someone believed inflicting pain upon me was precisely the thing to do; I didn’t deserve that. The pain I’ve been through was not something I brought upon myself, it wasn’t something I asked for and so graciously deserved. The pain I felt then and still feel to this day, have made me who I am.
I became suicidal at a young age; as early (if not earlier) as 11 years old. I inflicted injury upon myself- mentally, physically, socially, psychologically. I became a cutter. Scars cover my body. I overdosed multiple times; possibly causing permanent damage to my stomach and liver (among other organs). I burned my own flesh; creating even more scars. I became secluded and alone. I shut my world up tight within myself and so held all the pain inside. And in so doing, I, essentially, made myself suicidal. I believed that pain was all there was; there was no escape, no happiness, no freedom. I believed that there was no up; just down. I attempted throughout the years on many occasions to take my own life; backing out at the last moment and so failing.
I’ve been on the floor vomiting out every ounce of the pain inside- it did nothing but cause an aversion to swallowing pills. I’ve had to crawl around on the floor to stop from passing out from blood loss. I had, at one point, lost at least 1/3 of the blood in my body. All it did was cause me to learn how to get blood out of carpet, bathtub, and mattress. I learned nothing of value from the pain I caused myself, not directly.
Having been suicidal and depressed and still suffering from that depression (among other hindering disorders); I’ve come to appreciate pain; not in a masochist or sadist way either. Pain is a hindering process; it can get you down and cause you to want to give up on life or stop believing in the good of people… But there is good in everything. It took me a long time to believe that.
Some wonder what it is that I could have possibly taken away from the pain of my childhood. Hope. I had to lose all hope to understand how to find it again. Through my pain I have been able to connect with others, share with others, learn from others, help others; and in so doing all of that, heal myself.
Pain is something that we all experience. If pain was just pain and we learned nothing from it; let it hinder us and cause us to throw up walls and never learn to break them down; there would be no activists, no judges, no juries, no hospitals, no psychologists, no psychiatrists, no therapists, no teachers, no students, no religion, no friends, no family… No history. We would learn nothing and in so doing we would never grow. We would be a stagnant creation and would have gone extinct a long time ago.
Without pain we do not know the absence of pain- some would call that peace or just content; but pain is what makes happiness what it is. We are happy because there is an absence of pain.

I’ve learned to grow from pain. It hindered me for too long.