I am in pain. Some of this pain is physical. My back has been screwed up for a while now, and randomly, my knees will start hurting. I think that they like to take turns messing with me. The real pain that I feel, though, is inside. As I write this, I know that many people will start thinking, "Oh, just another sob story about petty feelings." Well, yeah. This is the story of my pain, and it is largely about my feelings. That doesn't make the pain go away, though. I realize how petty my pain, my feelings, and everything else may seem to someone else. But that doesn't make my pain go away.
Now, I want to preface this by saying that there might not be the most order in this post. This is mostly just going to be me expressing myself on the internet. I'm sorry if that's not what you want, but here I go:
For my entire life, I have felt like an outsider, a loner, and a weirdo. Growing up, I usually had groups of friends of no more than three. These groups changed every year, and there was little consistency. Honestly, as I grew up, the most consistent person in my life was my friend Spencer. I don't often use actual names on this blog, but here, I want to highlight Spencer for a moment. He has been my friend for longer than anyone else, and I cannot say here how much that has meant to me.
But when I was around nine, I moved away from Spencer. We stayed in contact, but we didn't see each other nearly as much. I also went to a new school around this time, and I lost most of my remaining friends from the previous school. Through the following years, I cried. A lot. I did not know how to deal with emotions, so I let them out. And I was yelled at for it. I was told to shut up, to stop being disruptive, to stop expressing my pain. What I was taught to do was to take my pain, to bottle it up, and to let it consume me from the inside out.
I don't wish to mention any names here, but there was one person in particular who hurt me a lot during this time. She was always angry at me and told me to stop disrupting others. It hurt a lot. From that point on, I hid my emotions as best as I could. Sadly, I'm not good at that. I am an emotional person, and when I can no longer hold in my emotions, I explode. Anyone who has watched football with me has likely seen this happen.
Why do I mention any of this? Because I'm hurting now. As pain engulfed me this week, I was told by some close friends that it was okay to feel the pain. They told me that I just shouldn't bottle it up. My response to them was this: "I don't know how to do anything else." I was never taught how to deal with pain. I know the simple things like "hang out with friends," "pray about it," and whatever else. But those are momentary fixes. I'm sitting here as an adult with no idea how to deal with pain besides ignoring it. Pain doesn't go away like that, though. I've tried time and time again. I've watched others try to ignore their pain as well, and they've always ended up worse for wear.
Usually, I'd put a positive spin on the article at this point. I don't have one. I'm in pain, and I don't know what to do.
This week, I listened to this song while writing this article:
