I wanted to write about something else today, I had quite a few ideas. But I can’t think straight, so I’ll write about the only thing I’m capable of thinking about at the moment. Trouble is, I can’t really tell you what it is concretely because of an NDA. So this is going to be a bit of an abstract piece to reflect on my emotions. Feel free to skip this one, as I don’t think you will gain any interesting philosophical perspectives. It’s basically just me going “owww” but psychologically and in text form. If you like to indulge in other people’s suffering, this is your chance, though.
This week I was hurt. I was hurt more badly than I’d ever been hurt before, though if you know me and know what’s going on, you’ll probably come to the fair conclusion that I’ve been very lucky so far if that is the most I’ve been hurt before. What I’ve experienced is laughable compared to the unfathomable amounts of suffering some people have to endure on this planet. Yet, emotions don’t work that way. Our biology doesn’t measure the amount of pain we feel with respect to an absolute scale but to our past experiences. Once again, I can’t tell you what happened to me but I’m certain it would do me no good because you’d use your own eidon to measure it and would probably find it laughable. I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to worry about me. I am in pain but, in the grand scheme of things, I am fine.
It’s a strange cocktail of negative emotions. Shake equal parts loss and disappoint, pour over ice, top with a whole bunch of betrayal. A drink so intense that anger and sadness melt into the same thing. It took months of time and several different people to make it, but I was forced to drink it all at once. Now I’m so drunk on it that nothing feels the same anymore and I don’t know what to do. I know what I would normally do and then do these things but it’s like I just can’t pay attention to them. I make mistakes I wouldn’t usually make, I get confused and do things I wouldn’t normally do but for some reason I don’t actually care. Under different circumstances I’d be worried about myself, but at the moment I’m not because it’s just another thing I don’t care about.
It’s not like I can’t laugh anymore. It’s not like I don’t feel pleasure anymore. It’s a natural reaction to try and drown pain in pleasure but that never works. I have plenty of ways to experience some cheap hedonistic pleasures that will give me a brief spike of pleasure to forget the pain for a short period of time. It’s the easiest way to give myself a little relief. It’s the easiest way to escape. It’s the easiest way to develop an addiction. But although my body doesn’t seem to care about its future at the moment, my mind is still sharp enough to know that I don’t want that. And so my poor body has to suffer under the rule of reason yet again.
I know it’s going to be better again. I’ll sober up at some point, the pain will fade and be committed to memory to serve as a new point of reference for future suffering. It will become a part of me and shift who I am and what I will do in the future. It will have a bit of influence over every decision I’ll be making. A wound turning into a scar. Not hurting anymore but also not back to the way it was before. Of course I can’t imagine that right now. It’s something I know from prior experience, not something I feel. Pain always feels like the pain will never end. It defies logic. It doesn’t respond to logic. It can’t be argued with, it can’t be reasoned with, it can only be comforted. Like a wounded animal.
I’m incredibly lucky that I grew up without real emotional support because it gave me the ability to comfort myself. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be comforted by other people, like for example my amazing friends, but it means I’m not dependent on it. This gives me a freedom many people don’t have. The freedom to be alone in a meaningless universe, to fully believe that I’m alone in a meaningless universe and to be fine.
Because in a meaningless universe, pain is irrelevant.
