Pain

We all bleed red, 

we all taste rain, 

all fall down, 

Lose our way,
We all say words we regret, 

we all cry tears, 

we all bleed red

Note: Yesterday I had decided not to post this. I had written it and then decided it wasnt worth it, I was trying to get out of the past after all. Tonight, I have decided to go ahead and post it. I will say this for the last time. I have been evaluated by psychiatrist. THERE IS NOTHING MENTAL HEALTH WRONG WITH ME. Thank you for telling me over and over that I "need help" I actually, according to two licensed psychiatrists, I don't.
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It took a lot of soul searching about this blog. I don’t want to step on toes, I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or for them to feel betrayed. I had written the second half a long time ago. Because of current events it made me feel like now was a good time to post it. I genuinely and honestly am not posting it to cause drama, or to confront anyone, this is something Ive heard from a couple people. I know the typing is going to make it appear like that, but it is not. I had a friend read my blog a couple nights ago and ask me why I have so many people on my facebook that give lip service if I don’t think they care. That was a good point. I have coworkers, friends, KC’s family, and fellow military wives on my page.  Some Ive never even met, some I have known online for years and consider friends even though in person weve not gotten a chance to meet up yet. I guess I don’t take facebook as seriously as some people do. In the future I may decide to limit the number, but for now, Im satisfied. (Tonight, I have changed my mind.)

~R

Here is the thing people. This is MY blog. I am writing about MY life and MY feelings in it. It is the one place in my life where I get to be selfish. Just because I don’t talk about other people in it doesn’t mean I don’t care or I don’t recognize what is going on in anyone else’s life. Just because I  write about eating meat doesn’t mean that I don’t respect a vegetarians right to not eat meat. Just because I write that I hate heavy metal music does not mean I hate people who listen to heavy metal music. It is my blog, my space, and yes I will be selfish. If you don’t like it, don’t read it.

It hurts me that people read my blog and think that I am selfish or judging others. It really does. I don’t want that to come across because I am not like that. I am not a judgmental person because I don’t want to be judged. I know not everyone puts their struggles out there for the world to see, and a lot of people keep them inside. The people who know me in my day to day life would never have known any of this about me had I not started blogging.

I had written this blog months ago. I had it posted all of ten minutes before I had taken it down. There were parts of it that I had thought were not the most sensitive. I had mixed feelings about posting it and thus had set it as a draft instead of published. I had been thinking about reposting this blog for awhile. I heard the song posted above, and it had made me almost post it. But it was because of an email I received, where I feel the person totally misread, and misjudged me that has inspired me to revisit this topic. Today I went in and changed the date on it (to bring it to the front of the blog) added a couple paragraphs to the top and republished it. I have the people who I use as pain examples permission to post it. I don’t give personal intimate details about another person’s life without them giving me the go ahead.

I blog because it is my therapy. I have had therapy. I have been evaluated for bipolar and depression along with anxiety disorders. For those of you who, without a psychiatric license, feel that I have one or all of these, the professionals disagree. I am a just a woman who has gone through a lot in her life and is dealing with it the way she knows how.

Now, these blogs are often depressing. I get that. The people who know me in real life, know that is not how I act. It is very very rare that Ill bring up my past, that Ill ask for sympathy, that Ill use it for anything. I just ont do that. I don’t have the desire or the need to. While my blogs may make it seem like I am dwelling and I am obsessed with it, I am not. It is my outlet and the only place I go to with it.

For someone to say that I don’t look at others pain or what they are going through is a slap in the face. In fact it hurt so much that I asked a couple different people, without giving out who had said that, if they see that about me. I asked people I knew would be brutally honest. They all laughed. All of them. I get yelled at often for giving too much of myself to people and in the process getting hurt, or run down, or sick from it.

I am not a perfect person. But I am going to say I am a damn good friend. I will give anything I have, physically, emotionally to a friend in need. I have babysat, driven across country, shaved my head, paid utility bills, sold my own property to provide for a friend in need, opened my house, my heart to friends. I have gone out of my way, rescheduled my life, spent money we didn’t have, given things we couldn’t afford to be there for my friends. I am fiercely loyal and supportive when you are inside of my inner circle. I put other people and their needs above me. Every time. I get yelled at for it too. I give so much of myself that there are some days where there is nothing left for me.

Recognizing others pain has been something that I have done naturally all my life. I am often the “therapist” in a group of friends. People find me easy to talk to, to relate to and come to me with their problems and hurts a lot. I listen, I don’t judge, I don’t bring up my pain in comparison, I simply listen. I paid a friends utility bill recently when her family had received notice that it was going to be shut off. I didn’t judge her, I didn’t ask her where her money goes to or why they couldn’t afford it, I didn’t judge decisions she made, I didn’t even ask or care to know why. I simply paid the bill.

I don’t venture to understand everyone’s pain. I have never had my husband die, I have never lost a limb, I was not born deaf, or blind. While I can be supportive, while I can hold them while they cry, I cant truly understand the pain, because I have never gone through it. I can show concern, I can show care, but I wont say “I understand your pain.” Because unless you have gone through the exact same situation you cant know it.

I don’t believe that one persons pain is better or worse, higher or lower, more sever or less than anyone else’s. Pain is pain. It hurts. That said, here is the blog I wrote January 25, 2011.

Post 34

There are different types of pain. Emotional and physical. There are different situations in which pain occurs that affects the person equally. The same event can happen to two people and the outcome and the level of pain can be very different. I don’t judge what a person goes through in their life because I don’t want to be judged for what I go through.

Pain is a funny emotion. It hits when you least expect it, it manifest itself in a variety of ways and it can bring people together or tear people apart. Physical pain, I believe, is easier to get over then psychological or mental pain. For instance: two children are at the emergency room. Both are there due to broken bones. One child sits with loving parents, he is wearing a baseball jersey and has broken his arm during a game. The other child is sitting there with a stranger, a social worker, who has brought her there after her father broke her arm in a violent drunken rage. Both children are feeling similar physical pain, their arms hurt. They will have similar healing times and cast wearing. However, the little boy with the loving parents will have a cool story to tell to his friends, the little girl will be off with a new set of parents, a new situation and have to deal with the emotional pain for years to come. The physical pain is the same, the emotional pain changes things.

How you were raised, the environment you grow up in, the support system you have often effects the level of pain in your life. I have two friends whose parents have divorced recently. One of my friends said “It was about time” when she found out. It was no secret that her parents were fighting all the time and should have divorced years before. She was relieved that they finally took that step. She was worried about having to bring her children to their home while the tension existed.

One of my girlfriends, M, is twenty eight, she has never seen death in her life. All four of her grandparents are alive. Her high school years were bright and fun, her college was paid for, her car, her apartment. The biggest struggle she has had to deal with was where to go to school and where to apply for a job after college. She has never been poor, never been hungry, never felt pain outside of the boyfriend girlfriend relationships dissolving. When her parents told her they were divorcing after twenty five years of marriage she felt like a knife went into her. She cried for days, she had a break down. Everything she had known for years was a lie. She found out they had been wanting to divorce for most of their marriage but wanted their kids to be raised in a home that wasn’t broken. She had to seek therapy for the divorce. She missed work the first week she found out because she couldn’t stop crying. It rocked her world and the pain was deep, and real.

I did not judge M. I did not say, “Oh get over it it’s just a divorce!” Nor did I ever think that. Other people had said that to her and it hurt her deeply. I was there for her. I listened. I told her I couldn’t relate because I never had parents’ divorce, or go through that situation. I never told her she should just be grateful that they pretended and gave her a good childhood. Because now to her her childhood was all a big lie. I didn’t say, “M, I went through x, y, and z how dare you come to me with something so petty as this.” Others did. She found out who her true friends were as she went through her pain, when others were so quick to judge and to compare the pain. That is not right. Pain is pain. Her pain, is hers. She owns it. My pain is mine. And I own it. I wont ever say to someone that they don’t know pain. That they have had a perfect life. There is no such thing as a perfect life. I may say, you don’t know this pain because you haven’t experienced it. I don’t put pain in levels.

I have gone through a lot in my life. So when a setback happens, or something painful occurs, I tend to deal with it well. Some of my friends have said during these times that they wouldn’t have been able to deal with the situation, they wouldn’t have been able to laugh it off. Comparatively the pain I had felt in the past was more than the pain I had felt in that situation, and I was grateful it wasn’t as deep as the previous one.

If you are in a car accident and break several bones, have to have multiple surgeries, hundreds of stitches and years of rehabilitation time, and then years later are in another car accident where the car is totaled but the outcome outcome is a minor sprain, the second accident may never affect you at all. You laugh it off, move on.

If you have never been in a car accident before in your life, never even rid in a car, and the first time you did you got into a car accident, the car was totaled but you walked away with just a sprained your reaction may be very very different. You may never trust cars again, you may never ride in one again. Your sprain may hurt you more because you had no previous pain to compare it to. The insurance claims may completely overwhelm you.

Same accident. Same end results. Different pain.

Pain is pain. It hurts. It sucks. It is something that no one wants to deal with in their lives. I have experienced physical and emotional pain. But I recognize that my situation is very different then other peoples and that I have no right judging their pain. I don’t want mine judged either.