Why pain?
So says Westley from The Princess Bride. His cogent statement stands the test of time, and diagnoses so much of the human condition. We are driven to seek pleasure and avoid pain, and boy does the market respond to that drive! We have plastic surgery and bodily enhancements and expensive clothes and all the latest electronics to avoid the pain of rejection. We seek alcohol and drugs and porn subscriptions to numb out. We disappear into sex and work and relationships and parenting. We seek anything and everything just to dull the constant chatter of our minds, the constant signals telling us something is wrong and we must run away from it or it will consume us.
And yet, we cannot escape our minds like we can external dangers.
No wonder the Buddha taught that the way out of suffering is to accept it. The very avoidance of pain is the cause of pain. And yet, in spite of awareness of this principle for much of my adult life, I still find myself constantly suffering.
That leads to the question. Why pain?
The past month and a half have been upheaval for me. On top of managing work, school, and friendships, choosing to let myself be excommunicated and starting the shift away from the Church emotionally and spiritually has uncovered pain. SO. MUCH. PAIN.
My habit with the Church was to use it as a crutch. Underneath the constantly raging battle in my heart and mind regarding the Church was this pool of unrelenting pain. I could never figure out why I couldn’t get myself out of bed in the mornings, or why my mind and heart would unravel to the point of checking myself into the crisis center, or why I would feel so down and heavy that all I could think about was the relief of dying by suicide. My relationship to the Church both inculcated that pain and prevented me from looking at it effectively.
Now that that relationship is ending, the pain is just...there. I’m no longer throwing religion at it to try and force it to go away (a winning strategy, let me tell you). I’m no longer hiding behind God. I’m no longer praying constantly to achieve some sort of twisted deliverance, as if I will be heard for the length and desperation of my words, as if God’s healing is a gumball machine into which we insert a quarter and instantly feel better. The pain is just unapologetically...there. An ocean of pain that raises and lowers like tides, but always present. I will feel calm for most of a day then some errant thought or word spoken will cause it to rise and tower over the atmosphere of my being like a ravaging hurricane, and because we cannot evacuate from our own minds, I just have to sit there and listen.
Listen to it tell me what a piece of crap I am, what a failure I am, what a disappointment I am. Listen to it tell me that God will condemn me and cast me out of his presence in wrath. Listen to it threaten me with the loss of everything I hold dear. Listen to it tell me that I am nothing without the Church, that all my gifts, my personality, my everything are contingent on my Church membership and if I lose that, I will be destroyed forever. Sometimes, when I really dysregulate it will twist even further into a demonic voice CONSTANTLY whispering to me how delightful it will be to see me dead and gone, how wonderful it will be for me to be destroyed, how much pleasure it derives from inflicting the suffering I so clearly deserve. This can go on for hours. HOURS. And with it horrible, unrelenting shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, dread, and grief. And because all my escape mechanisms have dramatically failed, I am left to just sit there and listen to the voice and its accompanying feelings. It’s awful.
When my mind unravels like this, I want to do anything possible to get it back together before the whole cloth of my being unravels with it, and I am left naked and shivering in the howling wind.
No wonder! No wonder I spent so long running to the Church regardless of the harm that my relationship to it did. No wonder I ran away from the pain, stuffed it away, refused to look at it, numbed it out with religiosity. No wonder I stifled so much of my own emotional, relational and spiritual development for so long. It was all a bid to get rid of the pain. With pain that dramatic and severe and unrelenting, who wouldn’t do what I did given my circumstances?
And my relationship to the Church was what ultimately broke down my mind and heart to this point. I grieve what might have been. What might have been, had the environment of my upbringing tolerated my natural curiosity, accepted and celebrated my sensitivity, intelligence and divergent interests, allowed me to form my own opinions, and disciplined me so that I could reach my potential. Instead all of that was squashed in the service of a dogmatic form of Mormonism. I could’ve been a scientist, a scholar, an artist, a musician. Instead, I was turned into a good little boy. Anger, fear, sadness, and sexuality were not tolerated, only mild and cloying happiness. I choked out threatening thoughts such as doubts. I never let myself disagree with authority figures, always believing disagreement meant my faith and therefore my value was in question, that they would always be right and I would always be wrong.
Mormonism failed me. What should’ve reflected the love of God instead nearly led to my death by suicide. What should’ve nurtured and cared for my soul instead wounded it. What should’ve empowered my agency diminished it. I am not sure I will ever fully heal in this life from the developmental damage Mormonism caused.
I haven’t touched a piano in months because of the depression. MONTHS. I haven’t sung a song in weeks. I haven’t played video games in weeks. Everytime I start exercising I stop because I never feel like it’s good enough. Sometimes I don’t even shower for a week. Because of the perfectionism I learned from my involvement in Mormonism, feelings of failure and inadequacy consume my mind anytime I try something new, and so I escape into my phone and social media. Hobbies that could be productive and joyful and integral parts of life sit disused and dusty. Creative ideas come into my mind; I swat them away, the sense of failure and inadequacy are too painful to face. These are the first blog posts I’ve made since February, and the first time I’ve written anything besides school papers since that time. I can barely get myself out of bed for work. I am barely scraping by in school. I rarely smile or laugh except when in the company of friends. And ultimately, it’s all because I’ve structured my life around the avoidance of pain through the validation of the Church.
So why pain, then?
I don’t know the total answer to that. There’s perhaps many reasons we experience pain, each one sussed out depending on the lens we wear. When I am not running away and sitting in wise mind, I recognize pain as a teacher. It signals to me when something is wrong. Without physical pain, for instance, a child would never learn not to touch a hot stove. We would not sense something is damaging us without physical pain. Similarly, emotional and spiritual pain teach us when something is wrong. They allow us to sense when something is damaging our minds.
My new journey has just begun, and its first demand is that instead of structuring my life around the avoidance of pain, I learn to listen. I learn to hear that twisted, cruel voice and recognize that underneath it is a wounded child screaming for attention because it is hurting. That I learn to compassionately tend to my shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, dread and grief, to hear the signals they are giving me and respond appropriately. Rewiring years and years of conditioning is not going to be easy. Letting go of perfectionism, inadequacy and shame will take time.
But for now, I see a little more clearly the path ahead. Taking time to write, to grieve, to listen, to sit with myself and invite the force of benevolence I call God into my life. To learn how to cope so I can function well. Choosing to believe that I am worthy of love just exactly as I am.
And one thing I know about myself from this process: I am incredibly resilient. I have survived tremendous mental and emotional and spiritual challenges. And even though things appear bleak and very dark in life right now, there’s finally a spark of hope that things will change. The breeze that signals the coming of dawn is blowing across my face.
Why pain?
So that I can know where to move for healing.
So let it begin.
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