Orethapedia

One of the things that drives me insane is when people think pain should never come. You have to embrace it and motivate yourself to move on. The motivation  to move past it is literally the desire to do things, get better heal and move on. It’s the difference between waking up before dawn to pound the pavement and staying in a chair with a remote.

So get up!

Life is not easy. People get sick. People break your heart. Stop gazing at your reflection as if you are invincible. You are not invincible. Pain is part of life. We don’t get everything we want or need. We get used, cheated, manipulated and sometimes scornfully insulted.

We fear failure so much, that we stay at jobs that we despise, and convince ourselves that we cannot leave and live in eternal torture. We defeat ourselves before we even start. We have unrealistic expectations, that a painful situation will get better. Sometimes, we need to just wake up and think about the better good of ourselves and realize that what we face now is temporary and we will get past it, if we identify what is happening.

Listen, I have had my fair share of death defying heartbreak. I have had friends watch me come unglued and appear to die. I remember one night where an incident took place and  I willed God to just strike me down dead, I hurt so bad. It was a winter night in the middle of a parking lot in the snow. I was so struck with the pain from something someone did that  the young man  standing next to me wanted to know if he should dial 911. I had stopped breathing and was just clutching my chest. I then crumpled into the side  the car in the dark of that winter night and sobbed uncontrollably.  I promptly came home and sank into a deep, dark depression that allowed me to shut off everything. I sat in a chair and cried, refused to eat and inflicted pain on everyone around me. I sat in one friend’s car and cried for 2 hours straight. She sat, turned the car off and let me cry. Why?  I felt betrayed. I felt abandoned.

Do you know what abandonment feels like?

I do.

I know what it’s like to pour all of you into doing something right and have someone spit in your face and call you worthless and more. I know what it’s like to have someone accuse you of something  you would never dream of doing.

Yep, death defying, soul wrenching, spirit crushing pain has embraced me a few times.

How about the shattering of a dream of being someone’s intended and realize that you are his beard?   Yep, been there too. He took me to my favorite restaurant and broke the news. All I could do was stare at him. That will be a great scene in the movie of my life. How about having a boss, who hated you so much , purposely cause an injury that left you with stripes on your back? Yes, I said stripes. I didn’t even know I was bleeding until I went to my best friend’s house removed my jacket and her mother  saw the blood seeping through my white shirt.

The song lyric that comes to mind is:

Can you help me I’m bent/ I’m so scared that I’ll never /Get put back together
Keep breaking me in/ And this is how we will end/With you and me bent

The greatest pain comes from those closest to us.

Yes, it’s made me tough. Think hell on wheels in high heels tough.

It’s these moments of being shattered that we are molded. Living in fear doesn’t help you. Being paralyzed by what we think can happen doesn’t help you any either. Recovering from a  heartbreak takes time, love, and patience. Surround yourself with those who love and care for you, unconditionally. You will learn who your friends are. They are the ones who know you are hurting deeply and let you hurt out loud. They are the ones who take the barbs and rocks you throw and know where they are coming from. They are the ones that make you eat, when you would rather starve. They are the ones that will look at you and ask you the hard questions and make some cruel, yet honest observations. They will make you assess the situation and help you use the pain to grow.

That is what you need to do. You  need to embrace that pain at that moment. I have had moments where I was unable to squeak out a sound over the lump in my throat. I have welled up while crossing the street and cried all the way home on a commute. Allow yourself to hurt. Use that hurt to make you better. Find out why you are hurt. Some things that happen in life are unexplainable. The untimely death of a loved one can make you question life. The idiocy of someone close can infuriate you.  All these things are lessons. Anger is one of the stages of grief, and we all have to move through it to move on.

There’s no quick fix, but the more you start to gently push forward the better it gets. I promise.

Besides those little scars on your soul, give you character.