I’m not sure what my intention was when I started writing this post. I think I had reached a level of exacerbation with my pain and just wanted to find some way of expunging the fucked-up feelings of shame and guilt I associate with my pain. I constantly question my relationship with my own physical pain, “is it as bad as I think it is?” “should I be coping better?” “am I being melodramatic?”. Physical pain – especially that which is chronic, and invisible to others – is incredibly personal, intimate and isolating. I suppose in many ways much human suffering is deeply individual and internal. All of the rhetoric I hear around me reminds me that there is no right or wrong way to suffer, to grieve, to mourn, to regret, to yearn or to hurt. Sometimes I worry that it’s this very rhetoric that has made it so hard for me to come to terms with just how damaging my relationship with my pain has been for many years now. It may be irrational and absurd, but the story I tell myself is that I need to do better, to cope better and stop complaining.
I used to tell myself that as a child I had no tolerance for pain, and I had these little evidential stories that I would refer back to when I considered this. The time that I got a splinter – which felt like it was the size of a tree trunk – stuck in my foot and screamed so loud as my mum and aunt tried to remove it that the neighbours came out of their house in concern. Or the way that I would cry and scream and insist that my parents stay by my side to soothe me for hours when I got the first of many migraines at 7 years old. My displays of pain were so visceral, so honest and uninhibited and pleading. As a child this felt like the only possible way to hurt, but then as an adult I felt shame about my displays of suffering. It was as though a capacity to tolerate higher levels of pain became a badge of honour for me, something I could be proud of.
When I consider the word tolerance now, I’m wholly confused about its relationship with pain. What do we mean when we talk about pain tolerance? Because the pain that I suffer is not a choice that I make, I can’t turn it off when I decide I have reached my threshold. But are we really saying something else when we talk about pain tolerance? Are we measuring an individual’s ability to endure pain, to suffer without showing obvious signs, or making a fuss, or whinging, or sounding like a broken record? I listened to a podcast recently that said that the current generation of young adult’s survey 40% less empathetic than previous generations. I don’t doubt that there is a lot more to this than meets the eye, yet it did make me think. Do we talk about tolerance, because to talk about pain and suffering is too difficult for most? It’s as though we celebrate an individual’s ability to endure pain without drawing attention to themselves, because we are a society so incredibly uncomfortable with sitting with someone else’s pain.
Since her twenties my mum has suffered from incredibly severe and altogether too frequent migraines, on top of which she has also had severe back injuries resulting in surgery twice and innumerable other causes of pain and suffering. I look back with shame and sorrow on how I used to tire of coming home to find the curtains drawn in mums’ room, a sure sign she’s been battling a migraine. I invalidated her pain at times because it was inconvenient to me, I struggled to continue to be supportive because I was tired of hearing about her pain. Ashamedly it wasn’t until I had experienced severe migraines and the same back injury and operations myself – along with gaining some much needed adult wisdom – that I was able to come to the stark realisation that my frustration at hearing about my mums pain was insignificant compared to the very real physical and emotional pain that she had experienced for so many years. Paradoxically, it has always been and continues to be now, my mum who is unwaveringly able to sit with, validate, comfort and empathise with my pain.
I’ve often joked that I inherited a lot from my mum, like my migraines and my back injury. In reality I don’t see it that way anymore, mum and I are partners in something that neither of us had a shred of choice in. What I actually inherited from her, was her desire to care for others, her generosity with her time and her words and most of all her ability to empathise and sit with peoples suffering. I haven’t always been proud of this gift, and sometimes still it causes me harm and distress but what I always remember is that the empathy and validation that my mum has given me in my worst moments of pain have been like a lifeboat for me. She has prevented me from feeling like I am in this alone, she has always shared the burden. Some people – like my mum – may be naturally empathetic but know this, empathy is like a muscle. If you continue to use it, it will become stronger until it is like second nature to you.
I’m not sure what I hoped to achieve in writing this, but I guess the message is to sit with your friend in pain, look at them and really see them, don’t look away. Strengthen your empathy. Pain is really fucking lonely.
(Also, Mum – I love you to the moon and back.)
Bad Feminist 