i slammed the car door into the middle of my thigh the other day. it was a rental car and i suppose i misjudged the length of the door. i was more mad that it didn't bruise immediately than i was about the immense pain i was in. i wanted proof of my pain. to make it more believable to everyone else. i could feel the pain, but if everyone else could see it, then it would truly be real and the commiserating could ensue.
last week when justin and i were dragging our worn bodies through one of the most frustrating weeks we've experienced in our work i needed someone to feel my pain - to feel for me. i arrived at work and sat in the parking lot with tears streaming down my face thinking this... this is my valley and this pain is the worst. during those tears i received emails of encouragement and emails of other people's problems.
wait a second...selfishly, i wanted this moment in my car to be about me and you're saying that i'm not the only one with problems in the world? there was that madness again. why couldn't my pain be the most important pain today. i needed to feel validated to make my pain truly real. where did my commisery go?
in my friend's grandmothers house there is a saying that hangs - if all the world's problems were hung on a line, you would take yours and i would take mine. seems like right now every woman i know is in a place in their life... a place of pain, a place of anger, a place of hurt and also a place of frustration. when i took time away from my selfish pity to reflect on what other people that i love were experiencing i realized that my emotional bruises were small potatoes.
while this post is mainly to remind me that even if you can't see the bruise of frustration doesn't mean it's not there but if you're feeling like you're in this place... let this post remind you that you are not alone. you're pain is truly real and it's ok to think it's the absolute worst thing in the entire world.
a few days later the bruise on my leg eventually showed and a little part of me was very happy, because damn that door hurt!
