The House Where The Pain Isn’t

Sunday 8 April 2012 - Filed under Journal

You are laying face down in the mud. The only thought in your head is “I want to die. I want to die.” repeating over and over. If you dig any deeper you only find thoughts that are worse, of guilt, embarrassment, shame, weakness. The only thing that saves you is the litany in your head, keeping everything else out, “I want to die. I want to die”.

Then, after an endless number of days, you open your eye for a moment, like you have other times before, but instead of blinding pain pouring in, you survive. Your eye is open and you survive it. And for a quick second you feel almost normal and it gives you hope. Then the pain pours in and you clench your eyes shut and keep yourself alive by saying, “I want to die. I want to die”.

But those quick seconds come more frequent and last a little longer. They always end with the same pain pouring in, but these moments of almost feeling normal are a memory you cling to. You hear voices and they sound so normal, so happy. You wonder how they can feel that way. It’s hard to remember feeling that way. Just normal, happy, energetic. You can only remember a single method of feeling that way and that is what brought you here. There is being high and there is wanting to die and your life has crumpled into that bipolar reality.

There is mostly pain but over time you slowly build a tiny little world, a little house where the pain isn’t. And the time chanting, “I want to die. I want to die.” gets interrupted by a few moments in this little house where the pain isn’t. From within this house you look out the window at our old life and you try to slowly put it back together.

Then the house gets destroyed. Totally gone, not a trace remaining. Your face down in the mud again and the litany sometimes seems like an option. You think about how many people took that option. When living with something and living without are both too painful to survive. People who would give up their kids, their wives, their every waking moment, gone, sacrificed because it was the better option. It’s one of the saddest things in the world, when living because the next best option.

You are in the mud again and reality gathers around, laughs and points – it’s your fault! You chose this. You are weak and depraved. A pleasure-seeking drug addict. You did this. You earned this. Your bed is ready sir, I believe you made it, enjoy! It permeates everything. It’s in everyone’s eyes. You chose this. You did this. You don’t deserve sympathy. You deserve everything you get.

But there is also kindness. People carry you and help you and look out for you. Mostly you don’t even know it. But when the eye is open and you see, squinting in the brightness of the pain, you see these people who love you, who don’t judge you and who help you over and over, bleeding themselves from the effort.

So you start building the house again. You look through it’s windows and you try to get your life back. And the house keeps getting demolished but you see that you can’t not build this house. Either the Litany of Death wins or The House Where The Pain Isn’t wins. And while the litany has saved you and kept you focused on the cliff’s edge, you don’t want to die. You want to live. You want to be free. You don’t want to wake up in the mud again. You don’t want your house demolished again. You want to open the doors and go live your life again.

You’ve told yourself this before because you thought you were supposed to but you never really believed it. You were still under the influence of the massive gravity of oblivion. Yes, choice is involved. Some troubled part of your soul is looking for something most people never have an inkling of. You knew the risks. You trusted yourself and you proved to be weak. You failed and along the way you lied, regardless of the fine print, and in your stupor you happily burned down a radius of destruction, hurting your friends and yourself. Your experiment exploded and you almost killed yourself and injured your friends but you were too high to notice.

So from the little house where the pain isn’t, there is a window that looks back on that radius of destruction. But you can’t look through it. Your little toothpick house will fall apart if you open that window. It’s not sturdy enough. You can’t fix that radius of destruction if you end up back in the mud. You can only fix it if you look out the other windows, the ones that don’t carry these disastrous burdens of the past.

It’s not denial. It’s not selfishness or a lack of compassion. It’s not being oblivious to the feelings of those around you. It’s a survival instinct. You are trying to stay alive. This is like the first sprout peering above the soil. It’s easy to kill, even through acts of kindness. The sprout does best if you stand back. Sprinkle a little water when it’s dry, pull a few weeds that try to choke it. But mostly just wait.

Sometimes you look at your little house and you think, this isn’t too bad! It seems like you’ve come so far. Other times you feel absolutely ridiculous. What a fuckup you are. How pathetic. Loser.

You take it one morning at a time. The litany had faded away. The house has been holding up. You’ve even taken a few glances through the back window. Maybe you can open it. Maybe you can look at all 360˚’s. Maybe you’ve won and you’re done and you can pay your debts and feel free, alive, unembarrassed, unashamed, full of vigor, full of confidence, happy, healthy, ready to go.

Or maybe you’ll wake up in the mud. Maybe you’ll be right back at the beginning.

Author Unknown

2012-04-08  »  lolife