Resilience

So, I had a conversation today with a psychologist. I had spoken to him on a couple of occasions before, but he isn't a regular therapist to me or anything. He said something to me about how people just 'go numb' after a while as a part of their coping mechanism.

He said my refusal to numb myself to my emotional pain is interesting. Instead of deafening myself to the rumble, as he put it, i just keep throwing myself against it again and again. Then he offered me a perspective that I had not considered.

He told me that this showed great resilience. Most people create a wall because they don't want to face the pain. They surround themselves with distractions and anything else to escape. He said the fact that I keep trying to battle this instead of just surrendering and running away showed a large amount of emotional toughness. Then he asked me why I do it.

I know why I do it. It's because I want to figure myself out. I want to know myself so that the types of event driven pain that I am suffering from right now are manageable if they happen again.

My problem is that these things overwhelm me far more often than I would ever tell him. I still keep trying to face them down. I don't know if I'll win or if I'll succumb to the despair...but it almost doesn't matter. It is insignificant in the face of the completeness I am hoping to find.

The loss of a parent and the loss of my marriage are both very recent. Sometimes I want to vomit, sometimes I write, and sometimes I hit things. I just don't want to be hurting from these things years from now. I want to understand suffering and the way it affects me. In my mind, it is the only way to truly 'cope'.