The changing shape of pain

Heartbreak & herniated discs.

Image via Pinterest/Canva

I have so much diazepam in my system, it could take down a horse. A small one. Probably a Shetland pony. (Since I moved to the countryside, I find myself thinking in pastoral hyperbole a lot.)

I’m currently on my fourth back spasm in the space of a month. I have reached the point where I have now prayed to every single god I don’t believe in. I have bargained with life and have spent the best part of my week lying on my back, under the gauze of medication, and watching the sky change outside my bedroom window.

It isn’t how I wanted to spend my week, but it’s become something of a habit over the last year of my life.

Growing up, my sister always told me that I lacked a backbone. Ironic, really, that she was sort of right. Endless back problems have made up my twenties and, now, my thirties, and while it’s easy to sink into feeling like the world is to blame, I’m just too exhausted to continue the feedback loop of feeling shitty about it.

So I try to befriend my pain. In these long hours of window-staring, I try to retrace our steps together, our shared history, like you would with an old friend (or a particularly volatile lover).

Pain.

I first felt her when I was eight years old and an unexpected head wound left my nerves vibrating for weeks after the initial impact. Our first meeting was sharp and shocking and (literally) knocked me off my feet. Pain disappeared as quickly as she had arrived (only to reappear again, breathlessly, when I was getting stitched back up – 20+ stitches, thanks for asking).

My experience of her was always fleeting – a kiss of something sharp that was over before it ever really began.

Pain showed up when I was sick. When I fell out of a tree after the boys on our estate told me I couldn’t climb as high as them (and I said: Watch me). She was there, like quicksilver, flashing bright when I found out I was the only person in my class not invited to Sarah’s birthday party. When I was grounded for lying and, a few weeks later, when I was grounded again for calling my mother a particularly ugly swear word I had learned from television.

But pain was always temporary and swift. A quick jolt to the system that caught me unaware and reminded me I was alive.

I didn’t realise that pain was something with staying power until I met a man who didn’t love me and I (foolishly, madly – a cliché) convinced myself I could change his mind. I was eighteen. And I was naïve. Pain was much different this time. She brought a friend: suffering.

I suffered for years (longer than I would like to admit) because I had grown up believing the bullshit young girls are told – that people change their minds, and that if we feel something ‘real’ (whatever the fuck that means), it is real (‘real’, all caps, neon lights strobing). And I guess it was real. For me, like, but not him.

(Dear reader, he never changed his mind.)

And pain stuck around this time. Suffering too. And their friends: Maladaptive coping mechanisms and badly written poetry. It sucked and it felt like it would never end. But over time something happened: Pain changed shape.

I started to realise that pain could be soft and that, if I was willing, she could offer me something important – some learning that was difficult to see initially. Some pearl at the core of the ever-present ache surrounding her.

I received a late diagnosis of autism last summer at age 36. Pain was present here, too, but over the years, I had watched her metamorphosis and this time, while she brought suffering (and for a few weeks, maladaptive coping mechanisms), she brought something else: self-compassion.

And now, here I am, with my lack of a backbone. And this time pain has shown up with clarity.

I have realised that all pain has ever done, really, is show me what I don’t want (and have just been too afraid to speak aloud) or where I’ve been settling for less than I actually deserve. For this reason alone, pain has become the best teacher and friend I could have ever asked for.

Pain is the sign that something is wrong. She is the slap in the face that wakes us up. Sometimes this impact is easy to decode: There’s an obvious physical injury we have to deal with. But sometimes, it takes a while for the sting of her palm to give way to what’s really going on. Sometimes she’s subtle like that.

Sometimes she shows up as a weariness in our bones, a heaviness in the space behind our hearts. Sometimes she’s draped in grief or she’s a constriction in our lungs – a niggling feeling that we’re missing something (quiet but persistent).

One of my favourite lyrics of all time comes from a song called ‘I Will Steal You Back’ by Jimmy Eat World:

“Here we go, here we go, we’ll take on so much pain, to feel secure - not feel anything.”

When pain shows up, it’s easy to get lost in fear. We don’t want to face her, so instead we busy ourselves by turning our attention to something (anything) that can numb it.

But for the clarity to arrive, we have to sit with her. We have to see her, acknowledge her and say with gritted teeth: “Show me where the fucking light is, because I know it’s here god damn it. I know it’s hidden here in this ache.”

Once we can do that, she starts to teach us. And we begin to realise that security and numbness are not the antidote we think they are.

Pain is a gateway. Pain is a threshold. Pain helps us move to exactly where we need to be. Pain wakes us up. Pain lets us see where, exactly, we are not yet living. Pain calls us back to our lives.

Pain is an invitation to our healed self, our highest expression.

And maybe it’s the diazepam talking, but I think that’s sort of beautiful.