Sunday afternoon goes by uncaringly, marked with the movement of the clock on the wall. with each second of quartz-powered batteries, as usual, the economical sense of it triumphs any semblance of sentimentality.
anyway. it has been a while since the last time I have written here. been wondering about what I could write for the title on this writing. recurring theme of these days, something like that.
in a Sunday afternoon, I find myself writing about nothing and maybe bits and pieces of everything all at once. maybe with slightly unusual theme at that, if anything.
somewhat unusual weeks, months, if I could say so.
not really anything quite special. on certain set of days, grueling and at times unforgiving days at work. on the other set of days I went to ER, got admitted, treatment and surgery, and with all that, more than a week off from work. had since been back at the, er, civilization as we knew it. not that much of big deal about it, or so I like to think.
but maybe I was mistaken on that part.
.
I might have glossed over some of the parts above. so let’s talk about what we don’t talk about when we talk about pain.
physically, mentally, emotionally.
so let’s say you have certain medical situation—not that I’m wishing that on anyone anyway—in which you were feeling constant pain. not that kind of shooting, excruciating pain, but rather the hollow, numb kind of pain that became part of your life. inadvertently, maybe, you just don’t think about those much, so you kept on running. gritting your teeth at times, maybe unconsciously so often times.
you endure, you kept on running. even if maybe like car running on fumes.
also let’s say you have certain kind of grief—also not that I’m wishing that on anyone anyway—in which you maybe have lost two or three people closest to you in recent times. friends or families death, choose what applies. you might have told yourself you have gone through the Kubler-Ross stages or whatever. so you kept on running, bits and pieces of sense of loss notwithstanding.
you endure, you kept on running. even if maybe like half-marathon with legs feeling like lead.
along the way, you got accustomed to heartbreaks. about that sense of rejection from others. about that feeling of ‘not good enough’. about that feeling of not performing to your highest standards.
‘well I know it’s a wonderful world, I just can’t see it right now’, you would say. ‘I thought I was doing well, but I just want to cry now,’ you would think, perhaps not that kindly, at times.
pain wreaks havoc, silently and insidiously. or maybe not that silent; those hollow, at times shooting pain and nausea; those choking and tears that didn’t fall when you heard a familiar tune or you see glimpse of certain series on the TV; that sense of fata morgana when you look into the past like a place that never was.
I liked to think that I could push myself through pain, that they wouldn’t affect me much. while taking on personal, social, and professional responsibilities, deeds and decisions, like some kind of ‘weathering the storm’, if that makes any sense.
I was wrong. there is no ‘weathering the storm’ applicable when physically, mentally, and emotionally, I had already been running at my limit.
.
these days I have been recovering. working things out physically, mentally, emotionally. so if you ask me ‘how are you’ questions today, I could say with certainty, well, ‘much better’, as much as I could be honest and true to myself.
‘pain is not something you bear with. pain is something you need to speak up’. that much is true, but I think it’s also true that pain is something you need to listen to yourself. you address the pain, you address whatever it is underlying the pain you experienced.
that being said. pain, they do weird things to people, man.