One thing people always get wrong about heartache is the way out.
The ONLY way out is in. INSIDE. Inside the numbness, the ache, the pain, the hurt, the loneliness- everything inside.
It’s true. I can verify because I have tried the other ways. And not a single one gets you to the other side.
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Anger makes you feel petty and small. Like everything in creation is towering way above you to where the stars are and mocking you for your inability to deal with what life has dealt you.
Sadness makes you feel weak. As weak as you’d feel if you’d been walking the earth with tar traipsing in your insides, your body in shackles that you have been long trying to file through – in a desperate bid for freedom.
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Needy makes you feel wrong or wronged. Because you do not know if throwing the doors open or resisting the gush of emotion is going to help you ease the pain.
Alcohol, drugs, sex and change make you feel numb. For as long as the numbness starts to wear thin and you feel yourself reaching out for a refill or smoke so you can crush the surging, unbearable pain again.
And love makes you feel vulnerable again. Hardly where you can bear to be.
My personal favorite way out, though, was control. I stuck to the sucker for years, trying to maintain an iron-will control over my every emotion. Binding my emotions with rules and locking them up so they wouldn’t upset my carefully-structured rule.
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Only it was so long before these unruly bastards kept under lock and key united in an uprising to blow those doors open and overthrow my pseudo-rule. They erupted like a dormant volcano that was seething with this hidden agenda all along.
Not that I didn’t know it was coming. I did.
I don’t think I had anyone fooled. Not even myself.
By not being ‘present’ in my present (and my present=pain), I was coming up with new, novel ways of keeping the pain at bay. Numbing myself to what I was really feeling in my heart, hiding it from the myself and the world. All- unsuccessfully.
If only I didn’t care what the other people thought of my true condition, I would be saying something entirely opposite to what I was. If only I didn’t scare easy imagining the reactions of people in my head, I would behave very, very differently from how I actually did.
And that is when it hit me.
The ONLY way out is in. INSIDE. Inside the numbness, the ache, the pain, the hurt, the loneliness- everything inside.
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I was trying to rid myself of the pesky buggers (my emotions) when I should have turned the tables and stalked them. Stalked them- like those crazy, annoying telecallers who won’t let you breathe easy on a wonky work morning when your desk is flooding with files and you do not even have time to go pee and you wonder if losing it on this most annoying specimen of one of the most annoying species on the planet will cause your bladder to give away.
Laughed there?
Well, it was due. Coz here’s where things start looking up. Looking positive.
By stalking the very disconcerting, unsettling feelings that scare you, hurt you, make you feel alone and leave you feeling naked and vulnerable in their wake, you are allowing them their discourse with you. Repressing them gave them added force and strength to bounce back (you know that). So why not give them their space to run havoc so you can chase after to demand what the f*ck their problem is- and why they can’t let you be.
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Confront them and ask them why they are lingering around longer than they should. And here’s what they will tell you:
“We’re here so you can feel sadness. And pain. And longing. And neediness. And grief. And hurt. And loneliness. And shame. We’re here so you can feel us and pass through us- into the space where you can feel compassion for all the feelings you ever feel inside your heart- coz they will all teach you something about healing yourself.”
And that’s the ultimate truth about heartache- you have to FEEL it to heal it. No shortcuts.
Featured image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
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