To be completely honest, this is my second draft and a complete re-write of this post. The original (which has been saved to try and make use of in a different way) started becoming a lot darker than I intended-darker than relates to the song I’ve chosen for Musical Mondays. Sometimes that happens, and sometimes it doesn’t work to keep going with that course of writing.
On my drive home the other day, Love This Pain by Lady Antebellum (music and lyrics to follow) came on shuffle and I listened to it about 12 times on the drive home as I tried to make heads or tails about how it made me feel. Do I love my pain? Probably.
How else can I explain a heart that is all too ready to run back to pain instead of moving on to something that might not hurt as much?
What other way is there to explain the countless people who stay with people who hurt them repeatedly? Maybe fear of change, but that explanation doesn’t completely explain why so many of us choose the same kind of people over and over again. We want to feel that old familiar pain that we’ve become so used to. They say love releases hormones that we become addicted to, and I’m willing to bet pain does too. Heartbreak pain seems to be a double whammy-you get a good dose of love and pain all in one go and then you keep coming back for another hit of that old familiar ache. Like they say, I’d rather feel pain than nothing at all.
How much harm does loving this pain cause? In some cases, I would definitely say that you should love your pain and embrace it. We need to feel, and we need to grieve, and fighting that need only causes more problems. However, it’s too easy to get stuck in that pain. Sure, we feel it for a little while and allow ourselves to wallow a bit, and that’s healthy-but what happens when that wallowing just continues? Your life falls apart. I know mine does. My house doesn’t get cleaned, the dog doesn’t get walked, I don’t go out and see my friends and family… All I want to do is sleep, or lay on the couch and do nothing but watch TV.
Yes, that’s depression. I’ve never even tried to deny that I have depression-it runs in my family and I know the signs. Mine isn’t bad enough that I need to be on medication for it (no judgement at all if you do-I think it’s important to be aware of what you need and to act on that), but I know it would be greatly improved if I stopped loving this pain so much. Yeah, I can say I hate feeling that way, but then I willingly put myself in situations I know will trigger it-because the pain feels better than feeling numb. Numb is the worst. Though how I differentiate between just not having current feelings and numb, I don’t know-I think I can’t handle not feeling something all of the time so it all gets lumped in with the idea that I “feel numb,” even when that’s not the case.
There comes a point where we have to make an active decision to stop putting ourselves in these triggering situations. By now, we know who and what hurt us… We just have to make a conscious decision to either stop letting them, or to remove those things and/or people from our lives. Easier said than done in some cases… But so very necessary.
No, we can’t always control how we feel, but we have to make active decisions about those feelings when they arise. We can choose to keep feeling that way forever, or we can choose to make a change. Whether that change includes seeing a doctor/therapist, removing ourselves from a bad situation, or simply doing something else-something that doesn’t hurt so much… Well, that depends on the situation. I can’t tell you how to fix it, all I can recommend is that it’s time to start looking at why we feel the way we do-and what we can do to help ourselves stop repeating bad cycles.
So can we become addicted to our pain? Definitely.
How much harm does it do? That can vary, but sometimes it can be a much higher price than we’re willing to pay. There are times where pain can do irreparable damage to our psyche and/or our lives if we let it go untreated or ignored. We need to deal with our issues folks. We need to be conscious of how we’re feeling, what caused it, and what we can do to fix it.
Me? I’m still working on it. I’m still learning how to stop repeating the same mistakes that lead to that pain I’m addicted to.
Do you love your pain?
She’s no good for me, I know that she’s a wildflower
She’s got a restlessness, a beautiful mess thing about her
But here I am again calling her back and letting her drive me crazy
It’s like I love this pain a little too much, love my heart all busted up
There’s something about her that just don’t work but I can’t walk away
It’s like I love this pain
It’s just an on again and off again situation
It’s a striking match a tank of gas combination
But here I am again, lighting it up knowing that she’ll just burn me
It’s like I love this pain a little too much, love my heart all busted up
There’s something about her that just don’t work but I can’t walk away
It’s like I love this pain
It’s like I love this life where nothing’s right unless something’s wrong
It’s like I’m just not me if I can’t be a sad sad song
It’s like I love this pain a little too much, love my heart all busted up
There’s something about her that just don’t work but I can’t walk away
It’s like I love this pain
It’s like I love this pain and I can’t walk away, oh yeah
It’s like I love this pain
