What’s Worse Than Getting Hurt?
The pain ends but this is harder to shake…
What’s worse than getting hurt?
If you’re in the middle of pain, of any kind, you would probably sob through the understandable answer: nothing. Nothing is worse than this.
Right?
I feel you, babe. I’ve seen my share of pain. I’ve dealt with loss. I’ve faced down grief. I’ve let people go. I’ve journaled my way through relationship break ups and the loss of people I’ve loved. And by that I mean, I’ve cried a lot and I wrote a lot about what I was crying about. I have written so many words about pain. It is startling, if I’m honest, to feel the raw intensity of those emotions. To see them sprawled on a page. Startling — and it fucking sucks.
I was reviewing some of these journal pages when I found something that unsettled me even more than the feelings did at the time.
After the pain of a particular breakup, I never wanted to feel hurt like that again. Reasonable. But I’d written it, explicitly. And those words jumped off the page and flashed in neon before my eyes.
Because of how much it hurt, I wrote so much about how I was so scared of opening myself up to being hurt again. I was so scared of feeling that pain again, of going through the enchanting highs only to be met with devastating lows. I wrote for days about how I never wanted to be hurt like that again and how afraid I was that I would be. It made me realise there’s something worse than hurting.
There’s something worse than the pain that comes with opening yourself up and exposing yourself only to have it fall apart. And not just in break-ups, either. Any emotional pain that you find yourself in — let me tell you, there’s something worse.
Worse than the pain is the fear the pain instils in you.
Worse than the pain is the fear of pain. Worse is taking that fear on board, letting it sit as a passenger, and fester and grow.
This fear holds you back from vulnerability. It keeps you from embracing the full delight of all life has to offer. Fear holds us back. Fear keeps us closed to love. Fear keeps us separated from hope.
If we hold ourselves back because of this fear, well, sure — we might not get hurt again. We might save ourselves from being hurt. Maybe we won’t experience the pain that has our gut-wrenching and our heart pounding and weirdly, our fingers aching (has this happened to anybody else?). But we will also be holding ourselves back from experiencing the best life has to offer. The most beautiful. The most fulfilling. The most endearing. The things that give life meaning. Fear of going through the pain will keep us anxious when we could be full of joy. Fear of going through pain will keep us rigid in the corner of the room, when we could be dancing.
I don’t want to be afraid of opening myself up again. That, to me, is much, much worse than being hurt again. Because as time passes, the pain lessens. I know each time, it will continue to do so.
But being afraid of the pain — that’s a choice. And that fear? I don’t want to choose it anymore.
I wrote myself a note on a little piece of paper at the start of this year. I was feeling the fear on so many levels. I’d moved out alone. I’d lost friends again. I’d started uncovering and exploring who I was. It was terrifying. Life-giving. Enchanting. But terrifying. This note has recently resurfaced, serving as a reminder, a gift to myself.
“Even when afraid,
I’m choosing —
Brave.”
Even when afraid, I’m choosing brave.
What will you choose?
