A natural human instinct is made to feel foreign to us, something to eradicate, something to fix. Pain – whether it be physical or mental, is uncomfortable – and that discomfort is constantly reiterated to us. Though, I think we can all agree that we would much rather experience overwhelming joy, than a debilitating sadness. 

From the moment we take our first breath on earth, we know pain. We leave a protective, warm, nurturing womb and are suddenly plunged into this big wide world – a world that is scary. 

From a young age, I have always questioned my existence. I remember being 7 years old on a walk in the park with my family and wondering what it was that kept people going on this strange journey of life. Though to others this may seem like quite a morbid thought, to me it was trying to make sense of something so unexplainable. I have never been able to understand what my purpose is, and I’m unable to settle for the answer that is simply just existing. The nagging wonderings of ‘Why?’ have always taunted me as I’ve struggled to fathom the complexities of existence. ‘Why do people keep on going, and why do I feel so disconnected from that reason?’. 

When I was 15 years old I was diagnosed with anorexia. An illness so cruel, so deceptive, so deadly – I lost everything I had once known. It knew how to manipulate me, what my vulnerabilities were and how to feed off of them to keep me trapped within its grasp. Very quickly, it saw that the fear surrounding my existence could be utilised against me. Very quickly I had become conditioned to believe that my purpose – was pain. The terror of that was almost easier to face, than the terror of the unknown. Nonetheless, the illness I was facing needed to be eradicated and I needed to be fixed. So, along came the whirlwind of diagnoses, the pills, the professionals swooping in at an attempt to ‘heal me’. A plethora of interventions in a world of suffering that was once so foreign to me. Eventually, after a gruesome 2 year admission into hospital and a bucket of trauma dumped onto the already existing torment of my emotions – my ability to feel had become my biggest enemy. 

I feel things deeply, I always have done. Maybe because of my ADHD, maybe because of my star sign, though maybe that’s just the person that I am. But that depth to my emotions caused destruction, and I learnt to fear that destruction. Everything I had once known – the relationships I had, the place that I called home, all of the big, bold goals I had dreamed of achieving – well it was gone. I saw the devastation it had caused to the life around me and the damage it had caused to myself. I remember staring at my reflection, utterly beaten as I realised that the innocent, care-free being I once was, had now been lost. 

The past few years, I have worked relentlessly to gain those things back – some damage has been irreparable though. I learnt to live in terror of my brain and the power these intense feelings posses. From the moment I started ‘recovery’, I started running. Doing everything I could to numb, to escape, to avoid the reality of what may happen if I stayed there and sat with those emotions. I’ve restricted out of resentment in a belief that it gives me a reason to belong. I’ve ran to males, throwing my all into another being to validate my place on earth. I’ve escaped through substances that make me feel so disconnected from myself that feelings no longer exist. I’ve avoided my emotions in such harmful ways – but it’s harm that I have authority over. 

It isn’t just the emotions that are so terrifying though, it’s the unknown outcome they may produce. 

A couple months ago I went away solo travelling – I stayed for a month at an off-grid piece of land in Portugal whilst doing volunteer work. For the first time in years, there was no escape. Trapped in the mountains, my trauma swallowed me whole. The pain of it all felt unbearable, and I got straight back on that running track, yet again trying to escape what I had been living in fear of. I ran away to Amsterdam for a week – only so I could feel $h!t and smoke a bunch of Mary Jane. Pretty dramatic right? The deep, philosophical pondering of our existence swarmed my mind and in a frenzy of disconnect from myself, I realised something…  

Humans evolved to be different. Logically, if you think about the process of turning from ape to homosapien – there is one main defining factor that leads us to be different. The ability to feel. We have this power to experience life on a much more complex level. We have an ability to see the world in a way no other animal can. Finding a partner isn’t a source of reproduction for us, it’s a connection with another that we label as love. Food’s sole purpose isn’t just for survival, but something with emotional value attached. Our days aren’t spent prowling around a terrain, doing only the things that keep us alive. Our days are spent living, in whatever way our complex human lives create. Beneath every survival instinct, there are large, grand, complex feelings. There is power in our ability to communicate these thoughts and express our emotions. We can fight for these feelings and nurture these feelings. Feeling, is what makes us human. 

Though this may be a poor attempt for me to justify my place on earth, I think it holds a powerful truth. A truth that I have avoided for so long. I realised that my lack of feeling amidst the suppression of my emotions had dehumanised me. No wonder there was such a lack of connection I felt towards myself – I was numb to it all. 

I remember being a child and the ways in which I would care. The anger I felt towards injustice, the euphoria I felt towards love. The unknown of these emotions didn’t phase me, I had not yet built this fear of rejection or resentment for my self expression. I miss it. I miss feeling sad when I loose someone, I miss the joy that came from experiencing love. I yearn for the care I used to pour into the world – before I learnt to fear it all. 

With the society we live in now, it’s easier than ever to escape our emotions. The state of the world weighs heavy on our hearts and the constant reiteration that we’re not doing enough leaves us trapped in the murky waters of negativity. We’re conditioned to see our emotions as an inconvenience. We plunge ourselves into a TV show, a book, hours of doomscrolling on Instagram – divulging into a fiction life to avoid our own. The escape routes are everywhere and they are more accessible than ever. There’s no wonder pain feels so fearfully foreign to us. The longer it’s left to fester, the more it grows. The more it grows, the more it consumes, and for me anyway – that thought is terrifying. Though I’ve learnt to see that the destruction caused – is caused from a place of avoidance. 

I can’t have joy if I don’t know sadness, and vice versa. I would much rather live on a constant wave of complex emotions, fluctuating between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’, than in a state of numbness to the experiences around me. That being said, the reality of that life is much easier to fantasise over than to actually live it. I want to live a life of emotional expression – rather than supression. 

I’m learning to see that my pain is human, and that is nothing to be afraid of.