in the world, knowing firsthand how tragedy can strike so unexpectedly. I looked deeply into her eyes in a potentially invasive way, searching for signs of pervasive inner turmoil. Having endured such a horrific tragedy, she must be a shell of a person, I thought, particularly so soon after her losses.
Then I remembered where I was right before I learned about the 9/11 attacks. I was festering in bed, six prescription bottles on my nightstand, wondering who'd come to my funeral if I died. I'd been in therapy for almost a decade, and yet I still suspected I'd spend the rest of my life feeling alone, miserable, and confined like a prisoner within the deafening cruelty of my mind. I was a chubby, overdeveloped twelve-year-old the first time a boy groped me and called me a whore in the school hallway. After years of hearing “fat slut” from both boys and girls alone and in packs and being grabbed without my consent, I'd begun to believe my consent wasn't necessary. Once, a girl from a neighboring school told me, “I've heard you're thinking of changing schools. Don't bother. Everyone everywhere knows you're a worthless whore.” From that point on, I truly believed this was fact—that everyone I met somehow already knew how pathetic and worthless I was. A decade later, at twenty-two, I still felt trapped under layers of shame and regret, like dozens of lead-filled X-ray aprons piled one on top of the other. I'd tried to starve it away, stuff it away, drink it away, and fight it away, but nothing changed that I felt trapped within my offensive, unlovable skin.
I called my aunt to complain about my misery; I had a roster of regular listeners who indulged my desperation. Not a few seconds into my woe-is-me story, she asked me, “Lori, how can you be thinking about yourself? Don't you know what's happening in the world?” I didn't have any idea. I turned on the television and saw the footage. They kept showing the towers going down, like sand castles slowly crumbling, and a part of me felt like it wasn't real. I knew that people were hurting and that I should be outraged. But I'd numbed my own feelings for so long that it felt nearly impossible to feel for people far removed from me and my debilitating apathy. I'd seen therapist after psychiatrist after pharmacist; I was on anti-depressants, mood stabilizers, and tranquilizers. My whole life was about making sure I didn't have to feel. But how could I see such tragedy and not feel? And even worse, how could I be seeing it and still be so concerned with what I was doing and feeling? What was wrong with me that I was so absorbed in what was wrong with me?
The truth, as messy as it sounds, is that the only way out is through.
That's the thing about feelings: Sometimes we resist them, and then we sit around feeling more feelings about our feelings, drowning in reactive emotions. We remember what happened and wonder what, if anything, we did to provoke it. We wonder what we could have done to prevent it. We wonder if we deserved it. We think about how unfair things are and how we wish we could go back in time to change them. We think about how we handled things, and if maybe we could have made other choices to change the outcome of what it is. And then after all this resistance, we wonder what's wrong with us for struggling so much in our own self-absorption. After all, there are so many other worse things going on in the world.
The truth, as messy as it sounds, is that the only way out is through. And the only way to let go is to truly believe in the possibility of a different way of being—to know in our head and in our heart that we can live a life that doesn't revolve around having been hurt or fearing future pain. We don't always realize it when we're sitting in our own self-destructed ground zero, but there will be a day when we feel better—if we just let ourselves go through it. Everything gets better with time; how much time is up to us. It's dependent on when we choose to change the stories we tell about our lives; when we decide to spend more time creating the life we want than lamenting the hand we've been dealt; and when we realize that no one's love, forgiveness, or acceptance can be as profoundly healing as our own.
Maybe if I stopped trying to control how I hurt, I'd feel a pain that would teach me what I need to do to love life more and need pain less.
As I looked at my new friend, vulnerable and yet so resilient, I wanted to love and heal her. I couldn't see it, but I knew she must be cracked beneath the surface. I imagined that she cried, screamed, and wailed herself through lonesome, traumatic nights. I visualized her collapsing into the arms of people she loved—other survivors who understood. I wanted to take it all away. I wanted to save her from a suffering that I could only imagine ate away at her soul day and night. I wanted to be her Prozac. I wanted to make her numb to the reality of her losses.
Then I realized that in that moment, she didn't need a hero. In that moment, she was existing independent of her tragic past. She wasn't heaving, having flashbacks, or fighting with the injustices of the world. She was responding to what was in front of her. She was eating a salad, albeit a wilting one; listening to music she seemed to enjoy; and acknowledging me, an absolute stranger sharing a once-in-a-lifetime experience within an eerily tame Times Square. She didn't need someone to take the pain away forever, because she was taking forever one minute at a time.
We all choose from moment to moment where we focus our attention and what we tell ourselves. We're always going to want to have more of the good things, less of the bad things, and a greater sense of control over the distribution. While we can't control that life involves hurting, we can control how long we endure it and what we do with it.
To a large degree, it's irrelevant to question why we have to suffer, since that just prolongs acceptance of what is. But it's human nature to want to understand. If we're going to form conclusions, they might as well be empowering ones that help us work through pain and let go. With that in mind, I asked on Twitter, “Why is there suffering in the world?”
PAIN IS A TEACHER
Suffering should be used as a teacher. This teacher will teach you about yourself and the world around you. ∼@d1sco_very
There is suffering in the world to make people wiser and stronger. ∼@ittybittyfaerie
Without suffering no lessons will be learned; without suffering none will be necessary. ∼@andrew2pack
We experience suffering to understand and realize our true strength. Pain leads us to improve our quality of life and open to love. ∼@ditzl
Do not seek justification for suffering. There is none. Accept its existence and learn from it. ∼@Mark10023
It's a natural human instinct to resist pain and to avoid its causes at all costs. In fact, we experience a biological response to perceived danger that tells us when to run for our lives—or in some cases, when to sit around stressing about our inability to run as quickly as we'd like. Just like an animal senses it might be eaten and receives an increase in adrenaline, enabling escape, early humans also developed a fine-tuned fight-or-flight response to survive in a dangerous world. It originates in the amygdala—the part of the brain that creates fear conditioning.
The only difference between us now and us then is that instead of being attacked by lions, as we may have been centuries ago, we're more likely to get in romantic squabbles or professional confrontations. More often than not, when we start kicking and screaming, there's little if any real threat; there's the just the fear of something potentially uncomfortable. We know intellectually that a disagreement or challenge at work won't kill us—and that stressing won't do anything to change what was or what will be. But we've conditioned ourselves to fight for control over our circumstances; and when that control seems to slip away, we panic. It's an ironic way of avoiding discomfort, but sometimes we make ourselves miserable to be sure that nothing or no one else can. We choose to hurt ourselves through stress and dread just to be sure we're prepared when something else could potentially hurt us.
We can take almost anything that hurts and recycle it into something
