on pain

I read an article recently about people who have a defect in their genetic code. They become impervious to pain. The actual name the doctors have decided is appropriate for the condition is "congenital insensitivity to pain." It manifests in early infancy, as baby doesn't notice a painful, raw rash. The manifestations continue into toddler-hood, where one mother described her daughter biting her hands until they were bloody, or almost biting off the end of her tongue after she had developed teeth. Gruesome though these things might be, the injuries became as commonplace as the scars, and these people grow up with a much steeper learning curve. They have to learn through being told, instead of experience, what actions could lead them to injury. 

I was fascinated as I read, and I had the same realization that the doctors concluded. Pain is not just a part of the human experience for the sake of hurting. It's necessary to not only separate the suffering from the joy, but it's meant as a protection. Pain keeps us from trying things that will kill us. Pain keeps us from repeating actions that have hurt us in the past. Feeling pain actually leads us to an existence where we feel less pain as we learn. Because it is such an unpleasantness, sometimes even thinking of an incident that was painful in the past might cause us to cringe involuntarily. The mere memory is painful. And the concept doesn't only apply to physical pain.

A horrible breakup, the death of a loved one, an awful argument with horrible insults, ongoing or past emotional abuse, a string of failures, bullying of any sort, dashed hopes or broken expectations - all of these are examples of situations in life that can cause emotional pain. And the list goes on. Millions of experiences that bring our mortality to the forefront of our minds and hearts. The point of all of this for me: we don't like it.

We avoid pain like the plague. We take safety measures, we cut ourselves off from the world, we cut people out of our lives, and we do what we can to keep from repeating the past. Mere mortals feel the approach of death and shy away from it. We don't want it in our own lives, and we hate it in the lives of those we care about. The more we care about a person, the more we hope for there to be no pain in their life, and if there is pain, we want to do something, anything to anything to assuage the onslaught. If it's physical pain, there is often something that can be done, some sort of offering of love in their behalf. We can make meals, we can assist if there is a handicap, we can pick up a prescription, grab a cold compress, clean the house, watch the kids, anything that will help to ease the pain of the ones we love. It's not so simple with emotional wounds. 

Often, these wounds are so internal that the emotionally injured are able to hide them from the world. Or, the wounds are so shallow that mentioning the incident that brought them about just rips the edges apart, and it all just hurts worse. There are physical reminders as well; there are things that occur in daily life at random that fit the mold of the exact emotional injury.  

These traumas that cause hurt create a surreal element of the world crashing to a screeching halt. Time stops. The world stops. Or at least it should. The outside world of the unaffected goes on turning and life keeps moving, but all the pain-filled person can feel is betrayal. Betrayal at the fact that their world stopped, but the actual world had the audacity to keep on turning. People on the outside are so eager to avoid the pain, they hurriedly return to their normal lives in the hopes that everyone else will too. And they do. As much as possible. 

Perhaps my little rant isn't any form of a cohesive line of thought, but these are just the things that have been floating around my brain lately, and maybe one day I'll let the entire world in so that everyone can know my point of reference, but for now, if I can get the thoughts out of my head, I don't have to keep letting them circle my brain endlessly.