By Brittany Davis
Pain is a weird thing. It’s weird because we can sit and talk about how much we hate it, how much it hurts us, how we wish we didn’t have to go through it and yes most of the time that is true. How much better would life be if we didn’t have to worry about what people were saying, and getting betrayed or lied to? How much easier would it be to actually smile and be happy instead of forcing yourself to seem like you’re fine? I mean there’s some logic to that. You force a fake smile one day, the questions stop coming, smile another day, and people go back to minding their business. Then soon enough you’ll become so good at it that you’ll think to yourself “Hey! Well if I fooled them, maybe ill fool myself into thinking I am happy” and that might work, it might even last for a few days. But then something will happen and before you know it, welcome back to the real world! And in the real world pain is inescapable. Within the four walls of your room, you sit and stare and secretly pray that somehow everything’s gonna be okay. That somehow or in some way things are gonna work themselves out and you can be happy. It’s weird to think that when we’re little, the word happy gets thrown around so easy. You get presents for your birthday, you’re happy. You do good on your report card, you’re happy. Then you get to middle school and high school and it’s like happy, what the hell is that? I don’t remember what that is let alone what it feels like. And honestly, I think it should be like that. No, I’m not crazy. Let me tell you why.
Happiness is something that is so easily taken for granted and it’s in a sense the responsibility of pain to come and literally bring you back down to earth. We’ve all heard the expression, “joy wouldn’t feel so good if it wasn’t for pain” and it’s true. You’d have no way to distinguish when you were upset to when you were happy if bad things never happened. You’d never appreciate the good things or the good people in your life, if bad things and bad people never came your way. It’s pathetic but it takes tragedy to remind us to try and triumph. It takes someone you love, whether it’s friends, family, or your significant other to not appreciate you or treat you badly to make you appreciate the people in your life that support you and that are always there. It sometimes takes putting yourself out there and putting all of yourself into something and being let down to teach you to maybe not wear your heart on your sleeve and to not get your hopes up as high,to be realistic. Because that’s really what pain does, it teaches you. Most of us would prefer being taught through books, formulas, and equations, but it’s true when they say experience is the best teacher. Well, pain is the highest among all experiences. It’s because it is something that is so easily distinguished between any emotion. It’s something that most of us never want to relive, while most of the other emotions you wouldn’t mind. If your sad, people can cheer you up, happy you can cheer up other people, angry some people like the rush. But pain is the one thing, that no matter what you do, it doesn’t always go away.
Which is why you should realize that maybe it doesn’t go away for a reason. Maybe it really is there to teach us something, to serve as that constant reminder to live, and do it for a reason. The truth is bad things are going to happen. You’ll get lied to, let down, heartbroken, hurt, betrayed, you name it and it will most likely happen, but it is these moments that the pain should be truly appreciated. Because the moments where you feel lost, confused, and like there’s nothing else, should be taken and embraced. These moments are opportunities. Opportunities to look at what happened and start over and take with you every single tear you shed because it’s in the moments when you are broken that you truly know what you’re made of. In the end all you’ll want to do is thank these people, because if it weren’t for all the pain you wouldn’t be the person you ended up being. It’s within the moments where you’re experiencing pain that you should become thankful, because it’s better to feel pain than nothing at all; when you feel pain, at least you know your living.
