I can’t hide from suffering.
Can’t outrun it.
Out-drink it.
Out-shag it.
Out-anything it.
So what’s left?
One thing.
One frightening, heroic thing
Face it.
Yeah, it might kill me.
Drive me mad.
Turn me into a drunk or a nympho.
But it’s doing that anyway.
One thought.
One day at a time.
Terrible things happen to us
physical, painful things.
But the real suffering?
That’s home-delivered.
By us.
By not accepting.
Every time we replay the trauma,
we bring it back to life.
Why let a rapist do it again?
Why let an abusive parent
flog you over and over?
An unguarded mind does that.
Let them know what they did.
Let them know you suffer.
Try to understand what made them harm you.
No excuses
but maybe there’s a reason.
And God, we get attached to our suffering,
don’t we?
Don’t forget it.
But try to let go.
My abuser was
depression
In the worst of it
I told my wife
I’d rather have terminal cancer
than the endless suffering I was drowning in.
I counted the days from Depression Day Zero,
just waiting for each one to end.
Just to survive.
Well
I survived.
But I’m not the same.
For one,
I don’t want cancer anymore.
I don’t want much at all.
Suffering still lurks in every cell of me
maybe not the pain itself,
but its memory.
Ten years on,
and not a day passes
without a reminder.
A heavy write blooming with truths, my friend. It had me nodding my head in acknowledgment.
Thanks for the comment Detritus, unfortunately you know exactly what it’s like.
🙏