Oh the time I spent courting and tending to my pain. It was with me as a lover, as an intimate friend. It was all I ever knew – once.
I served my pain with decadent (or not so decadent) food! Sometimes I would gorge myself with it for hours.
I would bring it wine and margaritas, the expensive kind!
I brought many suitors for my pain, too. Men of wealth, men of slumber – beautiful men and men of greed.
Oh, the agony of surrendering to my pain. Whatever it wanted, I used to allow.
Not so anymore.
Oh, I may be far away from anything that looks like a person that came from a loving, secure home. But, what I am not, is given to attract what suits my pain.
I sometimes believed that if evil, dark people had caused my pain, if I became more like them, my pain would ease up. They had all the power, right?
Wrong! I couldn’t have been more wrong.
My first husband cheated on me countless times. My pain then brought me to a few married men. If I was the one in the affair and I chose that affair, it wouldn’t bring me more pain, right?
Wrong! I couldn’t have been more wrong.
What did I know then? I knew this: I wanted the pain to stop, ease up even if for a moment’s time.
All of these courting measures did ease the pain – in that moment. But, in the end, I was left with more pain. Pain that was now irritated, sometimes even exaggerated because of the measures I used to still it.
The other night I ran a bath and didn’t turn the water off for a long time. I needed to cry. I needed to spill out a bit more pain, some new pain.
I try to no longer serve my pain with dissociation, running wild or stuffing myself with food or alcohol.
Today, I am still with it or not so still – but with it. I feel it. I dislodge it before it can take residence. I’m not always happy these days, but I am peaceful.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4