Hope in the midst of pain and chaos

Pain is something natural that at a certain point in our life we all get to experiment. Some people can be good at handling it some other are not so great. I used to think that I was great at handling pain, smiling to the face of the world while pretending that I was okay but I was not. I used to think that crying or admitting that me being in pain especially emotionally was a sign of weakness but it wasn’t. there is only so much you can take and sometimes crying is a way to for you to say that you have tried to be strong for so long and you are just exhausted. But in no case does is make you be any less that what you are: a human being. Then I finally got to understand that it is totally okay to not be okay because life is not perfect and all pink: there are moment where reality is too harsh and pain can be difficult to suck in.

At some point in your life you have to come to the full realization that there is a need for you to acknowledge the pain. You need to stop hiding or running away from it and face it no matter how abrupt or intense it can be. Life will always bring you pain: physically, emotionally, etc… life will bring you pain under all its possible forms. You don’t get a say in that. When it comes to the emotional pain you don’t get to choose if you get hurt or not: we all eventually be hurt whether we want it or not. This is the sad and somewhat harsh reality of life. However, you get to choose how you deal with your pain, you get to choose who will have the privilege to be the author of that pain. You get to pick the way you want to look at that pain and consider it.

Most of the time, pain is associated with so much negativity but there is actually another side to pain. Pain is there to remind you that you are still alive. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be able to feel that abrupt pain that at time feels unbearable. Waking up everyday, putting one foot in front of the other in spite of giving up is a reminder that you are still here and you are making it alive. Each day is a miracle because you survive the pain from the day before and you make it into another day; and as long as you keep on doing it there is hope that one day you will be okay and that the pain you feel today will one day be part of your past.

Also, depending on your perspective of life, you can see pain on different angles. you can see it as something that hurts you and breaks you. It is totally normal and this is something that most of us do because it is the natural and human way to go about it. But you can challenge yourself and go beyond what you would normally see and look at pain as an opportunity to build yourself. It is similar to the perspective one can have of chaos. Yes chaos is everything being ruined, tore down and nothing is left standing. Chaos in itself is depressing. this is the normal outlook that every human being could normally have. But beyond that, beyond the fact that I have to start everything all over again, I see chaos as an opportunity to build myself the way I always wanted to be. I see an opportunity to turn my life into what I would have always wanted it to be. The same is true for pain: it is an opportunity to learn and allow for every scar to remind you that you can heal and every time you heal you become stronger.

Although this is true you have to understand and accept that healing doesn’t happen overnight: you need to give yourself time to heal. Time eases the pain, it helps you heal from your wounds. Everybody is different and everybody heal at a different pace. Just because someone recovered over a short period of time doesn’t mean that it will be the same for you.  Just like someone taking 2 years to recover pain doesn’t mean that it will take you the same amount of time. You have to do your own experience of it and find what works best for you. You have to find your own pace and work on yourself until the day you actually are actually okay.

As far as I am concerned, reaching that point where I am okay is a work in progress for me. There are days where everything seems easier and there are days where pain hits me in the face and stabs me in the chest. But “that's the thing about pain: it demands to be felt”. I have learned to cope with it, keeping in mind that I could be okay today, tomorrow, in 3 weeks, in 1 month or in a year. It will take as long as it has to but eventually one day, I will be okay. And so will you. Until then take care of yourself and carry on to the best of your ability.