I want to grow

I want to grow and I’m going to grow. I’m not going to be this version of myself anymore and you won’t know who I become. You won’t talk to her, or be by her side as she goes through life— you won’t know her.

Her heart won’t even remember the small moments that’ve clung to it for so long. I’ll watch her embrace a new life that has nothing to do with you, and there won’t be a space waiting like there has been for far too long.

As I work through the long list of negative behaviours and obsessions that have overtaken my life these last few years, I come to realize a real, universal problem that I’m helpless to: the need for an escape. Escaping is probably the most seducing decision I've ever made, especially in times of trouble. But going through something troubling requires you to actively avoid escaping . See, I didn’t know that.

Here, I thought I could experience all the overwhelming pain as I was running from it. I know it sounds dumb, but hear me out. I still knew the pain was there. Even now, as I’m writing this, the old ache of an even older heartbreak gnaws at my chest like a disease or a bug. Quite literally, it feels as though my heart’s been infested by some sick creature.

And because I was so brilliant at understanding and ridding myself of this infestation, I decided to run in the complete opposite direction of it. In my head, I could not only match, but surpass the rate at which this infestation grew. And for a while, I did.

After a few destructive friends made along the way, here I am now: years later with the same gnawing pain, completely identical to how I felt it the first time.

How to: Handle Pain?

Thing is, I was alone. I tried all the typical ‘How to’ tips and tricks to get rid of my pain, and then when that didn’t work, I turned to the stuff that really wouldn’t help. All the while, I couldn’t realize one simple thing that would’ve made all the difference: I was truly and desperately in need of some help. And I'm talking about the 'people-loving-community-supporting-shame-resilient' kind of help. Not whatever I was doing.

It’s hard, though. I’ve always convinced myself that my emotional health was something I had under control. I thought all the books I had read, stories I’d heard and methods I had successfully developed would be enough. I thought I genuinely knew how to take care of this myself, like I took care of everything else. Well, I was wrong. Terribly wrong and running.

Did you know that it takes only minutes for bed bugs to begin populating? And each one can lay hundreds of eggs in a lifetime. The itching and hives are the least of your worries. It’s identifying whether or not they’re there that’s the real issue. Because an itch is just an itch until months have passed and your entire bed’s been infested.

I rationalized each speedy step I took as I ran, and the pain only went away for brief moments. Despite how brief they were, it felt worth it for a while. It felt like heaven against the pain I was trying to escape. I knew where my path was headed, and I knew the infestation was growing worse by the day. But it felt like I was destined for the path of destruction, and nobody could tell me otherwise.

I wanted to reach the root of the infestation, but it meant accepting what I couldn’t. What I would never let myself accept. It was a reality so contradictory to my core beliefs— to my dreamt reality— that running was the only way I could keep those alive. And the longer I ran, the more I refused to accept things. All that running couldn’t have been for nothing— or worse, for my own demise?

Denial to the defence

For a while, I convinced myself I wasn’t escaping. No— I was:

1. Coping with the pain for a little bit. I’d process it eventually— when I was ready.
2. Trying to fix my former mistakes by controlling the present as best as I possibly could.
3. Being a different version of myself: one that would never let me get hurt like I had in the past.

I wasn’t running— No, this had to be healthy for me.. it was better.

It wasn’t like how it used to be, that pain I had felt for a second, it isn’t like that anymore. It’s different, I’m different, so the pain has to be different too, right? Pain changes?

Pain does not change, and running from the pain only fuels it. And it makes sense. I was so exhausted by the end of it, that energy had to go somewhere. It was a destructive approach to accepting a heartbreaking reality, and even in those brief moments of clarity, I still couldn’t accept that.

Pain is unrelenting. It will get our attention. Despite our attempts to drown it in addiction, to physically beat it out of one another, to suffocate it with success and material trappings, or to strangle it with our hate, pain will find a way to make itself known.

— Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone

When you throw out the possibility of accepting the reality of your situation, quite literally everything could be anything, and anything could be nothing. You’re in a void of your own creation and rules don’t exist in the void. Just your heart on a treadmill, and your mind out the window.

My good ol' friend, the void

You lose yourself to the void, so every mistake you make isn’t made by you. That’s what makes it so easy to keep making them. Despite how hard your mind is knocking on that door, begging you to let them in— there’s just nothing that sounds more appealing in that moment than white noise in a void.

When do people stop running? When they’ve exhausted themselves to the point of no return? No, because then you’d have nothing to return to. I think people stop running when they’ve hit their personal breaking point. That, or divine intervention but I might as well have been born on Friday the 13th. There’s no chance I’m that lucky.

I think my breaking point was further down the path than most people. Actually, I know that. I haven’t met anyone who’s gone through what I’ve gone through yet. It’s the breaking point you’d hope nobody would ever reach, so I suppose it’s a good thing that nobody in my circle has ever reached it.

I do wish I had realized things sooner and regret not having done so, but at least I know that that feeling is universal for anyone who’s experienced… an infestation.

I want to grow, and maybe I won’t be growing at the rate of some lousy bed bugs, but I will grow. And when I do, I’ll be thankful for the pain. What is it they say… something about learning life’s greatest lesson?

That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt

— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars