Dissection

Thoughts.

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I don’t know how I care. I’m not sure how I love.

Of all the emotions, it’s defiance and anger that come to me most easily. Often, when pain, shock, worry, or fear provokes me, everything falls into a muted murmur by default. My temper is the first to seize motion, and it begins to pick on the cause, berating it uselessly for happening. The defiance is ever in place, unwilling to give in to the provocation. They form a cocoon of sorts that protects as well as convicts me. Because of them, news don’t sink in immediately and I can’t react that well. Unfortunately, the pain usually finds ways to catch up when everyone else is over the thing.

Sometimes, it’s a blessing, allowing me to go on and move about so I could finish the things that I need to get done. But other times, it’s a curse, building pressure but never letting it loose, never letting anything break--letting the pain build until slowly, ever so slowly, it subsides.

I fear this cocoon. I fear it because I don’t know why it’s there. I fear it because it keeps me from my emotions, from the things that can gauge how people live their moments, from the things that trigger memory.

Why is it there?

Is it my defense mechanism, a way for me to keep my sanity in check?

I’m sure it’s a little of helplessness. I dislike things that hurt me and make me feel inadequate because I can’t really help make them right, no matter what I say. There are those moments when I know I’m simply useless, and I loathe it.

Is it also arrogance? Can I not deign to have my heart and soul so injured for anything? Maybe I just don’t want to get hurt. Maybe I’m so focused on the things that I have to do that I don’t even stop for anything else.

Maybe it’s resignation. Passiveness. Maybe I’m indifferent to pain and suffering. I know they’re a part of life. I know they exist. I know they mock and jest with everyone. Maybe I’ve become so familiar with them that they’ve become ordinary to me.

Is it practicality? Have I gotten so used to the notion that life really sucks once in a while that I’ve guarded myself against breaking each time life provokes me to? After all, if it happens so often, it would be impractical to slow down each time I stumble on a disappointment. Maybe it’s the live with what you cannot change thing.

Or maybe I’m just heartless.

I don’t know how I care. I’m not sure how I love.

I crave every so often to cry and break down, to release tears as a tribute to things lost or broken. I want to worry, and I mean worry so much that I can feel my heart straining against my ribcage. I want my breathing to grow short and uneven. I want to feel cold. I want to give in. There are things that I wish so much I could shatter for, if just as a manifestation of a struggle inside me that pleads not to be separated from the things I want to keep. I don’t want to just freeze. I don’t want to just go numb.

Is lack of pain that you feel even in the most painful moments a sign that you are heartless? But that’s another weird thing about this nature of mine. I cannot say I don’t feel pain. I don’t feel it all at once at the initial impact, but there’s that throb that never quite stops, and even when the whole thing is over, it goes on to antagonize the soul a little bit longer.

I like to think that it’s faith that holds me back from falling. I like to think it’s the one that keeps me steady. It’s what reassures me that the things that have come to pass and will come to pass have been Planned. Everything will be okay, though “okay” may not necessarily correspond to our concept of okay. I like to think I manage to stay immune to suffering because I am fixed on the belief that everything happens for a reason; everything is as it should be--as a learning process, as a test of will and courage, as the way life teaches us.

I can’t really tell why that cocoon is so often there. Maybe I am defiant and angry because of a little of all those things--defense, helplessness, arrogance, resignation, practicality, faith. Or maybe it’s not defiance and anger at all.

This is my nature, frustrating and assisting me. It lets me take things in stride, keeping me from weeping unless I have to. It makes me choose immediately, at the point where the first cut should usually be the deepest: shall I hope or shall I break? Often, I hope. Meanwhile, I won’t grieve over things not yet lost.

Perhaps this is one of the ways that I love: in the desire to break and worry so much, and in the frustration because of my incapacity to do so. Pain hardly ever hits me directly, and I seldom cry, but I acknowledge pain; I understand it and feel it in my own way. I trust that things get better, and when they do, I embrace that. It’s like it’s hard for me to grieve over milk, whether spilled, in danger of spilling, or perfectly intact.

Life is like that. It’s hard. And we do need to live with what we cannot change.

So, now, I confront myself and the mess of my defenses, inhibitions, principles, and suppressions with what matters most at the end of the day. To want to care is care. To want to love is love. So even if it can get vague to me how I care and how I love, I know I care and love. And that’s plenty to get along with, because although people may have a concept of how things are handled--and by those standards, I really might fail for lack of emotional tendencies besides mood swings and a hot temper--I give what I can in my own way.

If I am to be judged by the emotions that I yield to, I could be judged as heartless. But for me, no matter what, it’s my choice to stay that makes me who I am--the choice to go through the pains, shocks, worries, and fears in the best way that I know how, the choice not to turn my back.

Nah, I'm not just being defensive.

I don’t know how I care. I’m not sure how I love. But I know: I do.

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Hmmm. Yun.

Hmmm

Man in the rain, you know the tempest so well...

Existence 101

I had a blog once: http://www.dustlesschalk.multiply.com. Nobody knew about it. It was just a place for me to vent with no holds barred. I placed all my reflections and frustrations in the few entries that I posted there. I didn’t want anyone to know about it because I reflect from experiences that I share with people. I didn’t know how they’d react if they read my thoughts, though none of them are meant to offend or criticize.

Anyway, I’ve deleted that blog. Another guy found out about it, so I copied everything into a Word document and deleted my account.

This is one of the entries, just a little bit edited. Why did I come out with it? Well…sayang eh.

Here goes.

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Pain is real.

The best kind of pain is the physical one. No matter how long the wounds bleed or how deeply the injuries penetrate, flesh and skin forgive involuntarily. Injuries to the soul are a different story. The soul embraces pain, coddles it, and then struggles to let it go but the sorrow has penetrated too deeply and too intensely into the whole system, it's hard to just shut it out. You know that there's something broken inside you but you just can't figure out where. Thus, for the meantime, you get to deal with it.

There are many ways to do so.

1. Find a passion that would help you regain strength of will. Draw. Speak. Shout. Play. Rock out. Do anything that may be detrimental to nonliving instruments but will at least give you a little satisfaction (a luxury that usually feels like it's in short supply).

2. Hurt yourself, physically. The pain of the flesh can numb the pain of the soul for a time. Get drunk. Cut yourself. Drown in the misery and love the depression. When you've had enough and can't get up on your own anymore, call someone's attention. Terrified of you and terrified for you, people will help. Then at least you will know that you do have people to count on.

3. Hurt others. If someone managed to hurt you, you can restore a little pride by illustrating that you can do your own share of the soul-ravaging. Shout. Offend. Push people away. Make them understand your pain by letting them go through the same thing. Hey, it could work like a screening exam too: you’ll know who your real friends are and who your fair-weather friends are at the end of it all.

Those are three of the most common ways of reacting to pain. All three come with consequences
too.

1. Finding a passion means doing the healing the hard way: leave it to time. Internal pain makes us bleed in a place where it's hardest to heal. Time can move so slowly while you're trying to let it do the bandaging. This takes a lot of guts--something that, I'm happy to say, is always free for acquisition.

2. Hurting yourself physically isn't nice. It hurts. It leaves visible scars. Your weakness becomes evident and you become subjected to opinions of people who may or may not understand what could drive you to inflict pain on yourself. Others will snort at your weakness of heart. Others will pity you. Others will sympathize. In any case, at the end of the day, you get your scabs, and, more often than not, the same old wounds inside.

3. Hurting others won't work if you're the kind of person who has a conscience. Be wary that the conscience is not something people are always conscious of, so even if you think you don't have one, this method of dealing with pain can show you just where your conscience has been hiding. A tainted conscience is no fun. On top of the old pains, you get to feel it tormenting you, telling you that you're not making your life any better. That's just how it works.

So, make your choice. Choice is the only thing you could really claim as yours, and it's the only thing you need to get out of shit. Find yourself. Find your reason. Find your balance. Tighten your hold on the things that keep you strong. Choose your plan of action, because, in life, time never stops even if you do. No one finds favor with it and it doesn’t care who it passes by.

Everyone fends for themselves in the world. We all have to find our own way. So, let’s just get to work learning.

--- first written 07 October 06