A Journey Through Pain

Recently I have had a lot of reasons to think about pain. I chose the title of this post carefully. The word “through” is critical. It is not a journey ”of” pain, or a journey ”in” pain, but rather through it. There is an end, you will come out on the other side, eventually.

The pain that I have been thinking of is complex, layered. There is the emotional pain from past trauma, pain that is all that more poignant as I remember all these years later while writing my book. There is the physical pain from all the surgeries as well too but those memories are more fogged. Still, when I injure myself, the memories of all those childhood hospitalizations come flooding back.

It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.

― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

Case in point, on the eve of Labor Day I slipped as I was getting of the couch. It had all the makings of a minor incident that became anything but minor. As I went to put on my flipflop, my right foot slid. Soon I was falling in slow motion. My right leg twisted and I hit my ankle, then my wrist… ouch. But then I slid even further and hit a second time. Ouch again.

The physical pain that waved through me was unreal. It felt like it was consuming me in a cloud of sensation. I iced, bandaged, and went to bed. I never went to the ER that night. It was a holiday weekend. I knew it would take forever. If it was a sprain, which I was certain it was, then all the ER would do is ice it and give me crutches. I already had crutches so what was the point I thought.

The next day I could not walk without support, and barely move with crutches. Injuring my wrist meant that I couldn’t grip the crutch with one hand. Moving was complicated. But, this was not my first fall, I knew the drill, and was convinced it was just a sprain. I used ice and elevation. I went into my pool for some aquatic therapy. For two weeks I carried on with life, very carefully, only thinking I just needed a little more rest.

Physical pain is the attention grabber, the one you pay attention to, but emotional pain can be the hardest to deal with. At the same time that I fell, a good friend of mine was dealing with unimaginable emotional pain. Her husband was dying of cancer. We worked together teaching fitness classes as well as being friends, so when I got injured in the fall, I didn’t tell her what happened. I had been covering classes for her so I didn’t want to add to her pressure. I figured I would just have to teach more from a chair until I healed. I taught classes nearly every day and rested/iced in between, but the pain did not subside.

Finally I decided I needed to do the sensible thing and get an x-ray. My way of dealing it wasn’t working clearly. So just over 2 weeks from the fall, I went to the ER for x-rays. Lo and behold, the doctor told me that I had broken both my ankle and my wrist when I fell. I guess I had more of a high pain tolerance than I had realized.

With this news, I could stay silent no longer and finally shared with my friend. Just telling her, caused another type of pain, the pain of empathy, knowing she now had more to handle.

This injury slowed me down considerably, probably in a necessary way, and about the only thing I’ve been able to do is writing. I’m typing now for this post but even that can hurt my wrist so mostly I dictate for my book. That has been an interesting experience because it has made things more visceral, more stream of consciousness as I recount verbally the painful memories of the past.

When it comes to pain, the one thing I know for certain is that it will pass. My bones will heal. My friend will first grieve and then heal as well. There will still be scars, whether visible or not, but the healing will still happen. What holds us back is fear. We don’t want to feel the pain so we avoid it, but the only way to get past it, is to go through it. I’m reminded of these scene from the pilot of the show Lost:

Life is always a struggle, sometimes more painful than pleasant, it’s true, but it is never static. Things change, get better or get worse, but they change. Nothing stays in one place.

So, whether you are like me and recovering from a physical injury, or you are like my friend who is in the middle of massive emotional pain, or maybe even somewhere in between, just know that it will pass, there are brighter days ahead. You will emerge from the tunnel, scarred but standing.