Hey, this is for you. I can see that life has definitely not been easy on you. It is hard to not hurt when you feel like your whole world is falling apart and you are standing in the eye of a whirlwind. It is not easy to adorn a stoic face when you feel the weight of the whole word on your shoulders. I see you, I see you hurting. I see you crying to your pillows, weeping when no one is looking. Falling over cracks. Carving out every ounce of pain from old wounds until you bleed over and over. It is not easy being in pain and to feel yourself in ruins. There is no way to romanticize pain and sugarcoat it with metaphors. Everyone goes through bouts of pain- sometimes passing and at times, all consuming.
Although I can’t speak for everyone, from personal experience, surviving an extremely painful situation will change your life like nothing else. Once you have endured and live through something that completely shatters you, you will know yourself like no one else. This is how pain changes you.
You Shut People Out
People who have been through hell and back tend to shut other people out. That is explicable considering they are completely drained of energy to interact and fail to trust others easily. Once you have been hurt, there is no glamour in letting people trample over you. Considering that there will always be uncertainty in the matter of So the safest bet is to disconnect from anyone and everyone and cave in. You will slowly learn to protect yourself by hardening and developing a thick skin.
Catastrophize
It is true that once you have experienced the worst kind of pain, you start to expect the worst of everything. You will believe that you are not allowed to have a good life for it can all go haywire pretty quick. You fear that life will take away everything that is good from you and history will repeat itself. You have a tendency to magnify the extent of pain so that you will not be disappointed or caught off guard when something goes wrong. Without any conscious prompting, their minds come up with the worst possible scenarios.
Trust Less
As humans, we are wired to connect. People who have had a difficult past tend to overthink and trust less. They tend to turn cynical and place very little or no trust in the people around them. The past pain holds them back and soon they would find themselves imprisoned in this mindset. Pain will also force them to operate out of this mindset and will hold them back from developing healthy relationships.
Overthink
When you have been through a painful experience, you overthink even the minutest details. When you brood over your past pain, you are taking away the beauty of the present moment. It forces you to dwell in your past experiences and it will soon start to worry about the future. This habit can become detrimental to your overall mental health and everyday life.
Gain Strength
It is not without reason that they say with pain comes strength. I think it is safe to say that life is never constant; it is a roller coaster that goes on and on. With its highs comes lows. At life’s lowest points, we find ourselves in agonizing pain, suffering. Our sensitive selves ache and often succumbs to the many anxieties and challenges it brings. But in the highs, we are joyful and our energy is defined by positivity and happiness. We harness the strength that we derived from the pain and use it to steer through life’s curves.
A Little Reminder
Once in a while, we experience a stabbing ache that feels like black pebbles dipping onto your skin. The pain nabbing you sharply so much that you gasp. It is hugely discomforting that it makes you shed tears till there is no sound escaping your lips.
If you are hurting and feel like you will never get over this pain, I want to remind you that one day, you will outlive this pain. Hang in there because one day you will wake up and not feel this pain consuming you. You will feel light and so at ease that the air you breathe in will feel magic. I’m not saying that you won’t have scars. You will. But they won’t hurt anymore. You will learn to move forward with the pain. Give yourself the grace of breathing in good air and soaking in sunlight. You will be stronger than ever before and you will thank the pain for making you anew. And in the end, you will be proud of yourself for flying through everything you stumbled over. So keep going until you make it. Good luck!