Comfort Kills

As horrible as it all was, in so many ways and for so long, the ultimate result of what happened was that I came out harder, stronger, and smarter than a comfortable childhood could have ever made me.

Seth Patton
Jul 25, 2017 · 5 min read

For all the ways one could describe my early childhood, ‘comfortable’ isn’t likely among them. Not long after my seventh birthday, my siblings and I found ourselves homeless, but that wasn’t the start nor was it the end to that saga. For years prior we’d been subjected to physical and emotional abuse, neglect, starvation, ridicule, uncertainty, and constant fear.

We moved around a lot when I was really little. I was born in the state of Washington, spent some time in Puerto Rico, and then returned to the Pacific Northwest where we stayed relatively local but still changed houses several times.

I can remember walking home from school, routinely veering from the sidewalk out onto the asphalt of X Avenue for no reason other than to try and see who of my mother, whoever her boyfriend was at the time, or both, would be waiting for us to walk into the house. It never failed that we had done something wrong; something deserving of their rage and consequent punishment. We walked out into the street because it gave us some sense of relief just to know how scared we needed to be.

This went on for some time, but I, nor any of my siblings, had any inclination that what we were living wasn’t the normal; that we weren’t just bad kids simply reaping what we’d sown day after day. At one point, we moved houses again, this time just across the street to the other side of X Avenue. We were excited. Our new house was bigger, and this one was purple, instead of brown. But unlike the exterior paint of whatever house we misnamed home, nothing changed. We still lived every day with pain and in fear.

In a series of events that, to this day, I’m not sure I fully understand, we were evicted from the purple house, and thus began our homelessness. Although, I might argue, none of us really knew what a home was anyway. Even still, we weren’t really homeless. At least that’s what we told ourselves. We were “camping.” We spent the next several months moving from one free campground to the next, making our way across the state of Oregon in a shitty white minivan.

When fall came around, we were living on the edge of a lake near where my mother’s sister lived with her small family. My older sister and I needed to go to school so we started spending weeknights with my aunt so we could catch the bus in the morning. It wasn’t long before the woman who’d opened her house to us began to realize the full extent of a day in the life of my siblings and me. She did her best to explain to the two of us the events that were about to be set into motion, but I’m not sure anything could have prepared us for what was to come.

The next thing I knew I was climbing into the back of a stranger’s car and on my way to a different stranger’s home. All the fear I’d lived with all my life hadn’t done an ounce to prepare me for the terror I felt at my own absolute uncertainty. I was seven years old, I was utterly alone, and I understood precisely nothing about what was happening to me.

I genuinely cannot remember if it was hours or if it was days before my sister and I were reunited at the shelter. It felt like weeks or more. Over the next four or five years, my sister and I, and the rest of my siblings as well, settled into foster homes and were eventually adopted by incredibly loving families. For the first time in our lives, we were comfortable.

Except, not really. Not one of us is unscarred by our pasts, and not one of us had any clue at how to be comfortable. Safe was unfamiliar, and thus equally as scary as anything we’d faced before.

Eventually, though, it got easier. I went on to graduate high school in the top 10% of my class, was offered a scholarship to a highly selective private university, after spending a year traveling the world I graduated from that university, and continued to almost immediately receive an offer to begin work in my field of study.

There are a lot of ways in which the experiences of our childhood continue to affect every one of us to this day. We’ve all had to learn how to cope, my siblings and I, in our own ways. For me, however, what I like to think sticks with me the most is the understanding of hardship I gained, which now permeates every aspect of my approach to life.

It’s funny, I’m an open book, and I’ll happily tell my story, or parts of it, to curious friends and coworkers. Often it will lead them to respond along the lines of “I’m sorry, I never realized how lucky I was.” To which I say, I think I’M the lucky one. Really, I do.

As horrible as it all was, in so many ways and for so long, the ultimate result of what happened was that I came out harder, stronger, and smarter than a comfortable childhood could have ever made me. I understand what it means to hurt, what it means to have nothing, and what it means to be truly, truly afraid.

I hold this knowledge close to my heart at all times. It drives my compassion for others; my empathy for those who, by no fault of their own, face impediments and handicaps to success. I know firsthand that, with the right support and mentality, every one of us has the ability within ourselves to do whatever we may dream.

To this day, and for every day I can think to imagine, I will continue to shy away from convenience in favor of discomfort. Bill Eckstrom, in a great TEDx Talk, says “it’s your own willingness to accept or seek discomfort that will dictate the growth of not just you, but our entire world.” And I couldn’t agree more.

Not everyone is as lucky as I was, to have been thrust into a state of abundant discomfort long before I could have ever made the choice. But everyone can make that choice for themselves. I do it daily, and you should, too: in the gym, on hikes, when kayaking, rock climbing, and more. I frequently and intentionally put myself into situations with which I am not comfortable; my safety isn’t entirely certain but it’s from that uncertainty that I reap the rewards, not least of which is invaluable personal growth.

This can and should, of course, be done on a larger scale as well; don’t ever let fear or discomfort stop you from leaving the job that doesn’t fulfill you, the partner that you’re unhappy with, or the place to which you feel tied.

Growth can ONLY occur outside of the zone in which you feel comfortable. The opposite of growth is stagnation or death. Comfort kills.

Seth Patton

Written by

Personal and professional growth seeker

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