When It Rains, It Pours On Everyone
I grew up being told that I’m not supposed to feel pain and hurt yet when I haven’t even produced money to support myself, haven’t even provided life support for a child and a 30-year-old single career woman who is just too tied down with so many anchors in her life, or that I’m still too young to understand what pain is to even feel it. I’m not talking about the physical pain, I’m talking about emotional pain. I was supposed to be grateful because I still have food on my table and a roof above my head, don’t get me wrong, I seriously am grateful for the sweat and tears they traded just to buy me things. But they, and a lot of people in the world, seemed to have misconceptions of what pain is.
When I reached the age where you’re accepted by society as an adult, those words kept following me all around but with more variations. I was supposed to be happy that I have money, and a job, and things that I can buy and that somewhere a child in africa is dying so I’m not entitled to feel pain or complain about my love life or how people in the office treat me. Same thing.
I grew up believing what they told me and I didn’t cry the moment my dad walked out the door, or when my sister lost her screws and it was just like world war in the living room, or when childhood best friend moved away because it was nothing compared to their pain, and when I got older I kept the act because there was this homeless guy and I should be happy I have a stable income. But then it happens it leaves this huge gap of confusion. The confusion soon makes this huge empty hole because you keep on denying the pain that you were supposed to be feeling in the first place, it soon evolves into baggage that keeps us from moving forward and gradually it develops into one or two disorders and problems.
I’ve met a lot of people from different backgrounds and heard an infinity amount of various stories on what they were going through and how they feel like throwing their phones against the wall in my brief life, and the moral of the stories are just that pain is simply pain. And hurt was also hurt. Much like love it didn’t need to be understood, it didn’t need age limit or money limit, it didn’t need to come from a certain level of society, it didn’t need levels or types, or criteria and scenarios. Pain hurts, and quoting John Green, it demands to be felt.
Pain is pain and pain hurts. No more explanation to it.
Maybe those words were meant to soothe or as encouragement, but the truth is it won’t ever help. Because when you’re hurt, you’re supposed to feel it because that’s the only way you can let go afterwards, not keep it hidden in a tiny box called a heart and just leave it there to corrode everything else over time. And pain is just the same for everyone, what caused it might have been different but hurt is hurt. A girl can be rejected by a guy and a man could get laid off, what’s the same is they would probably drown in sea of blankets and salty tears at night. Like a plane crash and a bombing, different, but people die none the less do they not?
It is all right to feel pain and to feel hurt no matter who, what, or how old you are. Because when it rains, it pours for everyone.