Was talking to a wise friend about our IF journeys and she told me this: "Just remember, everybody has pain triggers."
That's very true, isn't it? Her words remind me to keep things in perspective and that no matter how hard we try not to hurt others, there's bound to be something we say/post that triggers the pain in someone else's heart because we don't know the pain triggers in their lives.
I think this is made even more acute with sites like FB where people get to share many things with whomever they choose. For example: a travel extensive friend has posted lots and lots of travel photo albums, to which a mother of two young children commented, "Owwwww...I can probably only start doing that at the earliest 5 years from now."
A father with a young child replied to the comment, "Yeah, the same goes for me, too!"
And of course as IFers, we've had our own shares of pain triggers from sites like FB. Let me end this post with some quotes instead...
“It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”
- James Baldwin
“Forgiveness has nothing to do with absolving a criminal of his crime. It has everything to do with relieving oneself of the burden of being a victim--letting go of the pain and transforming oneself from victim to survivor.”
- C. R. Strahan“
“Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's a part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.”
- Jim Butcher
Quote sources: here and here
After reading many blogs and experiencing IF myself, there's plenty of voices echoing similar themes. One of them is the "Pain Olympics". I'm not going to write about the Pain Olympics here, but just a simple question about the strong desire I felt when I was feeling low while battling IF: that feeling that I wanted to let the WHOLE world knows about how shitty, grimy, and dark it was.
I think one big reason is that IF causes silent grief/sorrow/pain - the kind that other people who haven't experienced it would never understand, especially 'coz there aren't many non-IFers out there who would voluntarily be looking for info about the ups and downs of IFers (unless perhaps one of their loved ones experiences IF - heck, I didn't even start looking until I was thrust into that category!). Thus this strong current of desire to SHOUT OUT LOUD to the world (to let them know how painful and twisted and crazy it can be) builds up within.
Not many people understand either how tricky IF can be - that even after you "give up" and "stop", it can still haunt you and the wounds can still be so raw. Another problem is also that if you tell some people about this, they'll try to be helpful and in the end you'll end up feeling tired 'coz you have to explain your choices to them (and answer their questions) and depending on your mood, even their best attempts at trying to be helpful would push the wrong buttons inside you and that'll make you explode and the explosion would end up making you feel guilty and you just wished you hadn't told them about your battle but then it'd have made you felt so lonely and unsupported...yada yada yada...
On the other hand, the other possibility is that after you lashed out on them, whenever you share your IF roller-coaster ride again, they'll be afraid to say anything and you'll end up feeling like you're talking to a wall and not being supported and you want to feel upset, but you know that it's not their fault 'coz they just don't want to say the wrong things by "being helpful".
So in the end it's so hard to achieve a win-win situation when dealing with IF and the ugly repercussions it brings. Plus the world doesn't readily grieve with IFers as they grieve along with people who are gravely ill or people who've lost their loved ones.
It's hard when you're grieving and hurting so much and you feel that it's unnoticed or it's not "valid" just because you don't actually lose something "real" in other people's eyes. I think maybe one reason why I felt that urge was 'coz I wanted to convince myself that the feelings I had was valid: that I wasn't crazy or overreacting (even if the pain comes again and again and again at different times), that it was normal to feel that way. Thank GOD for the internet 'coz it's helped me feel that I'm not alone!
Anyway, I also find that people who have kids "normally/easily" don't understand the whole dynamics of what IF causes. It doesn't just affect my relationship with hubby, but also my relationship with other people, my relationship with God, and also my relationship with myself. It's hard to live with myself when I'm so full of anger, self-pity, sorrow, and pain, but on the other hand I can't deny all those feelings, either. I just have to accept whatever it is I'm feeling and deal with it.
Anyway, I haven't really felt anything extreme lately after we had that talk, but God knows what'll happen in the future. I must say, though, that I'm relearning to love myself again, to be my own best friend. I'm relearning to forgive myself and I think I'm doing a pretty good job 'coz I feel pretty light these days. :-D
