Understanding Pain

When I was younger, like 6 or 7 years old, I used to get annoyed by seeing my mom cry in “emotional” scenes in various teleseryes. I thought it was pathetic and unreasonable because she doesn't experience the pain that the characters feel. Then, two years ago, I finally realized how wrong I was when I experienced the agony of losing my baby brother.

I do not know what changed. I do not know how it happened but all of a sudden, when watching movies and teleseryes as well as when reading books with scenes or parts where someone dies, I feel my stomach churning, my heartstrings tugging and my eyes watering. Suddenly I understand why my mother cried and still cries when watching TV drama. Suddenly I understand the pain felt by the characters left behind. Suddenly, they were me and I was them.

My little brother only lived for seven very short months but I felt—and still feel—the pain of losing him as if I've been with him my whole life. After his passing, I have learned not to get too attached to anyone for fear of feeling that same or maybe much more excruciating pain again when the time comes that I have to let go of the people around me. But human as I was, I know that the feeling of attachment is inevitable. All I can do to save myself is to control the emotions I let other people see in the hopes of fooling myself enough into thinking that what they see in me is what I also truly feel. But I guess I only ended up feeling more miserable.

I restrain myself from feeling too much to avoid hurting too much. There is not as much pain yet I cannot also feel as contented or as happy as I want. The times that I should have spent having fun with my friends or bonding with my younger sister were spent instead inside my own fortress of indifference that is so impenetrable, no one or nothing can see me wallowing in self pity. Sometimes I feel so hollow, so devoid of life and the emotions that come alongside it and sometimes, I feel like I’m going to spontaneously combust with all the feelings I try suppress inside of me. I was covering my face with a blank mask. But those were the times when I realized that doing so doesn't dampen the emotions and the pain I was intended to feel. I realized that I was lying and denying to myself. And I also realized that what I was doing was wrong.

I remember reading John Green’s best-selling novel, The Fault In Our Stars. There was one quote that stood out among all other agonizingly beautiful words.

“That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt.”

What I did was wrong in so many ways. I shouldn't have suppressed what I felt, shouldn't have isolated myself from the world emotionally, shouldn't have faced this grief alone, and shouldn't have turned away from everyone and everything who might have offered me help. I shouldn't have but I did because I was too proud, too fooled by my own denial that I was strong enough to face everything on my own, without help from anyone.

This awareness of my mistake made me understand what pain is.  

That it is a part of life. That escaping it is impossible and that avoiding it is unbecoming. That it is in league with happiness but that they are one though not the same like two sides of one coin. And finally, that as long as I’m feeling it, I am capable of loving and am alive.