If there's one thing that's true of me, I really, really hold on to my pain. Hold on to it for dear life at times, even in the face of overwhelming healing. In fact, I realised tonight, I want my pain. It's like a safe, warm security blanket to keep me warm and away from... whatever might be out there to get me.
Since we started releasing the podcasts, I've been very depressed. I've had some good days, some positive moments, but I've felt really low overall. You'd think I'd be happy and smiling and positive: wow, it's actually happening for me! No, thanks to some really dark thinking on my part, I felt really awful. I'd learnt, when I was very young and then all the way through my teens that my success came at the cost of other people's pain. It was an almost daily reminder. So, in order to carry on doing the only thing that gave meaning to my life, I learned how to make myself suffer constantly. Every good grade, every happy moment, was met with depression and misery. Self-hatred is something I've struggled with all my life, and it's really difficult to convey how much it's dogged me, unless I show you the scars and talk about the times I've thwarted my one true love and purpose, because I have a tendency to be slightly flippant and laugh at myself when I'm not actually feeling it. When I am feeling it, it's the end of the world, pretty much, and I tear myself to shreds.
I spent this afternoon thinking about why I want my pain. It's a shield. I wrap myself up in it whenever something happens that's good or happy or unpredictable. When I was growing up, there wasn't any happiness, or very little, and any happiness I felt I also felt guilty for, so I run from anything this big, this magnificent as what's happening to me now.
It's ironic, really. I write fantasy fiction. I write stories about people who rise to the occasion when they have nothing left, people who have experienced the kind of terror and horror in their lives that I can barely imagine, and yet still manage to face the next day without collapsing in a ball of misery. Compared to my characters, I feel pretty weak. Of course, it's not that they don't feel it; as Yaxha says in the book I'm about to finish, "Bravery isn't something you feel, it's something you do."
I've been shielding myself from the whole of it, the good and the bad. I've never been in this place before, this tentative, tenuous space where I've got no idea what's coming next and yet this is it, this is the dream unfolding. I grew up being told it was impossible for dreams to come true, and since we tend to try to force reality to fit what our minds think is true (which never works, by the way), I've felt desperate at every positive comment, every encouragement. The cries for the published books to be available scare the hell out of me. Because that would be the dream come true. That would be real and huge and ... I feel like I'd probably explode in some unsightly manner at the event.
It's frightening, terrifying, and at the same time it's glorious. And that's why I've wanted my pain. If I keep my pain around me, I can shut out both the fear and the glory, because I'm so terrified it's all going to burst around me like a soap bubble, and that I'll wake up tomorrow having imagined it all. I've shut my heart off to it because it's just so huge, so massive I can't really comprehend what's happening. I never imagined I'd even get this far, let alone anywhere further down the line.
This evening, after a long talk with a friend and a long read of a book by Byron Katie, I put on The Charge of the Pelennor Fields from Lord of the Rings, and reminded myself a little bit about courage and honour, and what I'm trying to say about fear and hope in my own world. I feel better. I'm still terrified, but I'm not shielding myself so hard from this unfolding. I have a tentative grasp on this as being real, not some gargantuan trick being played by the universe.
Thank you to Tim for the Stumble. The podcasts can be found at
our website. I believe we should have a better website up soon now that we finally have our own server up and operational.
Somebody put up a thread today asking why people carry on living unfulfilled lives, ignoring or dismissing self-help. The answer is from my perspective because really living that life actually takes far more effort, commitment, and courage than just thrumming along making ends meet. But you have to choose, and this is what I chose to do. Really, there isn't any alternative.
(My song for the moment is Imogen Heap's "Can't Take It In")