Hey guys, I just thought I'd share a piece I wrote to vent something I've been struggling with for a long time now. Writing really helps me make sense of what I'm feeling and where those feelings might be coming from, and it's also nice to share it occasionally in case someone feels the same way and it helps them too! There's a lot of talk about pain (both emotional and physical) so please take care and don't read on if you think it could be upsetting💛
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I learned how to be quiet about pain when I was very young. I learned how to fold in on myself like laundry, to take up less space in the cupboard. I learned how to keep the peace around me by sweeping the dirt under my own rug.
I have been taught that expressing my less favourable emotions is just complaining—something weak people do when they're too incompetent to solve their own problems.
Incompetent. Incompetent. This word is very important to me. Incompetent is the word I am always running from. To run from incompetency means to run from feeling dejected, feeling lost, feeling hurt. To run from incompetency is to run towards goodness. To run towards a me who knows all the answers and shoulders all the burdens and shrugs off all the pain.
Some days I am not very good at this race I am running. Days when the past lurches forward to bite my ankles, or days when the future looks back to scorn my present.
On these days I am weak. The poise slips. It's all too easy to cry a little and vent my fears. I forget that I am supposed to be keeping all of this shut away where no one else can see. I forget that I am not supposed to be dragged down by these feelings in the first place.
Today I feigned nonchalance and I feigned it well. No one noticed that I was hurt by the thing that happened, and sitting alone in all my hurt, I was bitterly gratified. I had fulfilled the proper narrative of an animal who is injured and returns to its cave to lick its wounds only in private.
But there is a desperation for the hidden pain to be noticed. This is the Achilles' Heel of the whole stealth operation; it threatens the little play I have constructed in which I suffer alone and inconvenience no one and am all the stronger for it.
Today I stood upright to talk to my mother and doubled over in pain the moment she left the room. It is satisfying, knowing I did the valiant and honourable thing of keeping the damn pain to myself. It is infuriating, the way my eyes flickered to the door in the dark and private hope that she would come back in and witness me while I was down.
I want to be strong and hide all the hard things away. I want someone to see my efforts to hide all the hard things away and realise I'm strong. I want to bring to life this character I have created who suffers without complaint and is loved when the truth is revealed. Who suffers well.
This is the person who stores up agony to a breaking point, to justify the ultimate snapping of composure. This is the person who wants to be depended on relentlessly and one-sidedly, so that someone someday might notice the unfairness of it all. This is the person who virtuously and righteously take all the hits without a sound, so that when they finally, inevitably break, their pain will come to light all at once and inspire awe and guilt in equal measure.
Who am I, really? Is it terrible to want to play this character? Perhaps some old wound craves acknowledgement and understanding and doesn't know how else to ask for it except by hiding until it festers.
Strength. Competency. Resilience. Dependability. Independence. They have all become synonyms in my black and white dictionary. They have all become straws for the drowning man.
I self-impose silence. I take pleasure in denial and secrecy. I take pride in successfully keeping a problem to myself.
Pride. That's another important word. I think I have too much of it, although it pains me when others point it out. Pride implies I think highly of myself, which is something a good person should never do. Pride is so audaciously self-absorbed, so high-and-mighty, so filthy with ego. There's probably a lot of it in this damn thing I've written.
Pride is the other thing that keeps my mouth shut. The thing that says I should be austere, untouchable, immovable. Pride is the thing that says look here, you don't have a lot going for you so you better keep this mask on right if you want to be good. If you want to be admired.
These terrible things keep me safe. I can't let go of that stupidly noble character or that cowardly pride. I need them to shield me from the reality that I am emotional, not all that put together, and honestly hopeless most of the time.
I need to have something worth liking about myself. I need to have a grit that makes me undeniably good. I need to have a strength that goes unsung, that lies in wait of discovery.
What an exhausting way to live. But it’s the only way I know.
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I'd love to read your writing too if you want to share it😊
