C’mon Baby, Make it Hurt So Good

To overcome fear –must you feel pain?

I’ve been reading a daily mediation book since the start of the year. It was a suggestion from my mother (by the way, I love reading suggestions, so if you have one, please share!) that she recommended because it helped calm her nerves.

I should have taken it as a sign that I would ultimately write this blog, but it’s an everyday “food for thought and prayer” that was written based from Alcoholics Anonymous, and my mother used it for anxiety issues. However, I think most of the material can relate to any addiction…or just those of us who tend to be utterly obsessive.

Regardless, The Language of Letting Go has proven to be helpful –and a bit of a mind reader. It almost always seems to know exactly what I need to read. It’s like it knows what days of the week are more difficult and about all the different moods I cycle through.

Yesterday –the entry was about “feeling the pain”. In a nutshell, it says to overcome fear –you must feel through all of your discomfort. Of course, acknowledging is part of that, but even more –is allowing yourself to physically go through the ordeals.

To believe my higher power can take away my distress and my fears and intensity towards not being in a relationship or being single –I’ve got to feel my way through it. I have to let myself cry, let myself get upset, let myself get angry, and let myself…

…let go.

It makes sense to me now why Step 3: surrendering all of the negativity to a higher power comes after Step 2: believing. Before you can give up anything – you have to figure out why you need to get it away from you in the first place.

Letting myself feel the longing, the regret, the sadness, the loneliness –all of it…is actually kind of refreshing. Maybe that makes me a sadistic love lady, but crying it out, yelling/screaming it out, writing it out, talking it out –just flat-out getting it out gives me a little bit of freedom.

I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to “surrender it” or how long it may take me –but I think I’m ready to approach it. My longtime friend, T, said in a comment on a previous blog that “I think this is one of those steps that you have to keep coming back to, that you have to keep reminding yourself of.”

I agree with her. There are always going to be periods of highs and lows, and moments where you believe with your whole heart and moments when you just want to eat some peanut butter.

I’m human. I’m single. I’m struggling. I may believe today and tomorrow I may not. But for now, I’m accepting myself as I am and attempting to keep my head held high. And, even as it hurts (hurt so good, actually) –I’ll keep pushing through.

Because one day – all will make sense and all will unfold as it should.

As soon as I figure out how to surrender….and all that.