Craving Pain? Or Just Inured to It?

Lindsey Rainwater
Sep 6, 2018 · 5 min read

How painful can we let things get before we finally decide that something has to shift?

The answer to that disturbing question is apparently “pretty fucking painful.”

So many people are going through life, carrying psychological, emotional, and spiritual wounds that would leave people screaming in horror and calling for an ambulance (or a priest) if those wounds showed up in the physical.

And we normalize it.

We have somehow come to this idea that pain is normal. It’s ok. Everyone deals with it and we just need to suck it up and carry on. And so we live with this pain — with these wounds — and we continue on in the situations that created the wounds in the first place. Or we allow new situations to make them worse.

Now, I’m not saying that life doesn’t come with discomfort. Life is uncomfortable. It can be painful. There is loss. At the very least, we have to watch the dance of transfiguration that our world goes through, simply because change is the natural order of things.

But I am saying that there is no reason for SO MANY people to be walking around with gaping, bleeding, gory wounds in their minds and souls, and to just be ignoring them. Or brushing it off as “It’s ok.”

Or god-fucking-forbid, “Others have it WAY worse.”

This is a symptom of normalizing pain and trauma.

We see this disgustingly often when it comes to women in particular. Men suffer trauma as well, but women carry a disturbing load of trauma on an individual and societal basis.

This is evident in the number of women who are carrying gaping wounds from sexual harassment or emotional abuse, and when they talk about it the world says “Quit whining, it isn’t like you were raped or he hit you.” Those women who HAVE been raped, only to be told they were obviously doing something to lead to it, and that basically “Loads of women have been raped, you’re not special.”

Those are the really ugly and obvious examples, that we have far too many of.

And then there is an entire other load of wounds that women are living with, that aren’t so obvious. These are insidious, because they aren’t blatant, and they’re even harder to talk about without being labeled a “whiner” or a “drama queen.” But these issues have laid much of the foundation for the more abhorrent crimes against women being normalized and perpetuated.

These are things like women being clearly told over the generations in Western Society that their voices are worth less. That their feelings are invalid because we are “hormonal” and “fickle” creatures who can’t make up our minds. We’re bad at math too, dontcha know?

It’s women having trouble leaving a shitty job because they’re not sure if they’ll be listened to any more at another company, or being unsure they’ll be able to demand the same amount of money they’re getting now. It’s women having trouble leaving a shitty SO because they aren’t sure if they’ll have support without him.

It’s the loss of the “tribe,” “village,” “coven” of women that we’re supposed to have to be able to lean on in times of need, because women have been turned against each other. We are no longer sisters, but competition. Competition for the jobs, the sex, the money, the attention.

And when we’re told those things are what are important, women are further stripped of what makes them fundamentally women, because we’re brainwashed into thinking that what is important to men needs to be important to us, or we’re simply going to lose.

But yet at the same time, we’re also told to strive for this arbitrary ideal. We need to be the perfect weight, perfect shape, perfect temperament, and we need to always be wearing just the right amount of makeup. Of course this is all in the eyes of the beholder and we’re somehow supposed to please ALL the beholders.

If we fail in this impossible mission, we are harasses, belittled, mocked, and wounded. And since it IS impossible, this WILL happen.

And then what?

It’s basically assumed that we like the pain. We like the discomfort. After all, why would we not achieve perfection if we knew that could spare us? Why would we keep going back to people to hurt us if we don’t enjoy the humiliation? Why would we stay quiet if we didn’t like it? Why would we speak up if we weren’t just looking to have more heaped on?

This is the vicious cycle that we live in. A world that has tried to convince us that this is simply the way life is. Life is painful. Life is cruel. The world holds our chin and forces us to nod up and down as it hisses “This is the way things are, RIGHT? And you’re ok with it, RIGHT?!” And thus, society has its confession that allows it to continue the way it has for generations, not at all unlike the “confessions” extracted from witches before the Church could burn them alive without that pesky guilt . . .

We are wandering in a sea of hurt and humiliation, trying to hide gaping wounds that leave trails of salty, etheric blood behind us as we journey. And we try to tell ourselves it’s ok.

But yet . . . but yet . . . there’s that whisper deep inside us that says this is wrong. That this is absolutely not ok. We’re not really inured to the pain. We do not crave damage. They have not extracted our confession, and we should never go quietly into the night.

For many — most — women, this whisper seems like nothing more. For a few, it has risen to the level of a scream, but for most it is just a quiet, mutinous whisper being allowed a moment of time here and there in the dark.

Here’s the thing about whispers though . . . get enough of them together, saying the same thing, and the world will not be able to ignore it for long.

And that’s when the fight starts. It’s already started — long ago, but it’s growing in size and ferocity. As we begin to really lay claim to the magick that was once ours to wield with pride. As we reinstate ourselves as wise women and give the finger to those who tell us to keep our place in line.

And this, ladies and witches, is where the process of Unfucking becomes crucial. Unfucking: the process of becoming who you were before the world told you who you were allowed to be. Recrafting yourself to the the person you WANT to be. Reclaiming the divinity that you came to this incarnation with.

Because you are all that you have ever been. Maybe you just can’t see it. Maybe you just can’t access it all right now thanks to the generations of shit that have been shoveled onto you.

But it’s there.

We can find it.

And we can free it.

Lindsey Rainwater

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