jes brazlee
Sep 4, 2018 · 2 min read

Walking out of darkness and drudge, after the dwell of an age there, is like reawakening my senses from the numbing novocaine of dental work back to the pain and healing it masked.

Our culture, our society, is so bad at feeling pain. We are so bad at suffering that it cripples us, our minds, our strengths, our insights, our growth, and our healing. All of which we are desperate for, we crave and proclaim through lyric and spoken word.

But when confronted with the opportunity to experience affliction, to suffer, we shun it and make ourselves into victims. We deny the opportunity to burst forth from the small shell around us. We don’t want to hurt; hurting is not okay. We have been trained to believe that pain is bad; to suffer is to be weak. We don’t accept any of that here.

No, instead acclimate the growth to where you are: don’t let the pain grow you up, belittle the growth to where you are so you don’t have to move. If it doesn’t fit my desires, my lens, my worldview, then IT should change — never myself.

I am humbled, and victorious, to say that I survived! I am alive! I walked through darkness, blindfolded, wounded with many steps. I cried out in agony, almost in defeat, watching my spirit bleed from me, scraped and scratched, begging to be released from the pain, and cursing it while I was in it. But now, I’m free. Senses reawakening to the new life that has burst forth from the former shell of who I was, I am alive.

Pain cannot always have the explanation we desire, but it always gives birth to the growth we need. Though it hurt, though I grieved the loss of the time it took from me, the joy it stole, the days and weeks I no longer remember, the precious moments I could have had with my beloveds, the questioning of what was even real or if I was real… I would never trade me now for the shell of the woman I was before the darkness began.

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