The Evocative Side Of Pain

Pain.

It’s a sensation that most try to avoid. Physical pain becomes an instinctive avoidance as you learn through the experience growing up. 

But emotional and mental pain, no matter how hard you brace yourself for an event that would potentially cause you significant hurt, is never instinctive. No matter how many times you go through an emotional hit, the feeling remains evocatively humbling. There’s no training, no number of hits you can take that’ll make you stronger. 

I suppose I’m the idiot who always believed in the goodness of people. That deep down, there are souls that are meant to find their purpose and would like to share their Dharma with you.

But the brutal truth is that most people are born asleep, live asleep and die asleep. They live a life completely centred on themselves and are only involved in their own personal stories.

Today, I felt pain that honestly, could’ve been avoided if the person causing it had stopped to feel. If she had decided to pause, to think how it would’ve been had it been her in my shoes. Had she taken a split-second to think, she would’ve instinctively realised how painful it would’ve been that the other person behaved in a way that lacked basic human decency. This is compounded by the fact that she claims that she has strong emotions for me.

This made me question her as person. Did I choose to see what I had wanted to see in her and ignored the realities/truth of who she really was? How could a person that had gotten all of my time be so far removed from a person that I would actually want to spend any amount of time with? Had it been a sadistic game all along? Was she plying for my attention as part of a macabre social experiment on her end?

In instances like these, you can’t help but look up into the heavens and thank God for giving you a glimpse into a future that would have been an unfortunate one. Whatever moments I shared with her would continue to remain close to my heart and live in my memories.

But from here on end, my emotions for her will have to stop. What remains will be a version of her that remains emotionally attached to me but will find no recourse and reciprocation from me. This is not punishment for her behaviour any more than it is for me. It was a nice sojourn, a blip in an alternate reality that could've been. While I feel sadness in this, I can't help but feel as though a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I will live on to tell this chapter in my life, but that is all it will have to be.

A chapter but not the story.