Heart. Beat.

Secret.

Silent.

Invisible.

Deniable.

Palpable . . . like a heart beat.

Crushing . . . like a juicer.

Emotional pain is real.

Not talking about it doesn’t make it go away. It simply turns it into an insistent shadow: following, mimicking, and overtaking you . . . following, mimicking, and overtaking you.

Emotional pain is a hard thing to quantify. A doctor, or therapist might ask, “On a scale of 1-10, how painful is it?” But that is only useful if you have felt the full scale. Moreover, even in the midst of life-altering, decision-hampering, breath-catching pain, one is reluctant to call it a 10. Surely others have dealt with and survived deeper pain than this. Comparison finds us at the most absurd times.

Each person has a unique threshold, one they can’t be fully aware of until the pain shoots past it like an arrow sprung from a bow. 

It feels as if something has knitted itself around your heart, lungs, and ribs, pulling them together asynchronously, so breathing becomes an impossible task.

Like each of you, I am acquainted with pain through my life experience. Injury. Loss. Trauma. Change. Relationships. Parenting. The wounds become like a scab over a scrape, initially protective and healing, and then suddenly and without warning, ripped off.

Practicing pain does not make it easier to tolerate.

We are all wired for connection, but ironically, we think we can handle “it” alone. Even when the pain is a product of our own decisions, the intensity of it pierces our armor.

I have been through a thing or two over the last number of years, and have learned about my high threshold for emotional pain. It isn’t something to brag about, because I don’t believe we are meant to develop a tolerance to pain. Unfortunately, I also buy into the notion that I should be able to handle my problems and struggles on my own. Admission of a perceived inadequacy is something I would prefer to “take to the grave” than share—out loud—with others.

But here I am.

People live with pains that I cannot even imagine. Some of those people courageously step forward and advocate for themselves (and others) through education, and personal story-telling; we are all better people for it. 

Sadly though, we still live in communities where the myth—that silence and secrecy create safety—is perpetuated. Silence and secrecy create isolation and shame. 

A line exists between pain that is tolerable, and that which is intolerable. The line is indistinct until the moment you’re sprawled face down on the other side of it. And then you can’t figure out how to get back to the place of tolerability. In that moment, it feels as if you are unable to endure, because you can't even take a deep breath—breathing is involuntary for God’s sake—and you think that it would be okay if a rock fell from the sky and landed where you lie. It is super scary to exist in that place, because you really don’t know what is going to happen next. It sounds crazy. It’s not. We are not meant to carry those burdens on our own.

When there are people you can reach out to, they will be your guiding light back to safety and security, and then you will wonder how you ever got to that other desperate place. But, at least, you will know the way back.

Why would I share this painful stuff? Because I am someone that you know to be good, reliable, loving, smart, funny, strong, athletic, and capable.

But, I am MORE than what you know or see.

No one can side-step suffering. The only ointment for emotional pain is feeling like we belong. 
YOU are my belonging. I feel blessed because of that.