I have realized something about myself these past few months: I TEND to be a sucker for pain.
There are these moments when I find myself positively craving for my fix. Especially so, in recent times, where I find the life that I have built around myself to be a consistent source of positiveness, love, and growth. Things will be hunky-dory, business-as-usual, when suddenly I’m questioning the very nature of my reality. How could this be my life, where good, happy things are happening to me? That’s not the way I’m used to having it be – my life is supposed to be marred by things spiraling out of control, guilt trips, actions assuring me of my worthlessness and reinforcing a sense of abandonment. In that moment, I almost demand with an overwhelming sense of entitlement – where is the one thing that is truly mine: the pain, the rejection, the theatrical extremity of dispute and quarrel. If I can’t have the one thing that was dependably supplied until now, then what faith can I ever maintain?
There seems to be little information on the internet on how to deal with this sort of an addiction. Once I realized this pattern within myself, I turned to ways in which anybody would seek to resolve other sorts of addiction. By accepting it, and deliberately NOT repeating that which you seem to naturally be wired to feel, think, or do. Instead, I seek my fixes in other sorts of ‘highs’ and positive experiences of pain, if I may phrase it that way. For instance, thanks to my flatmate+friend, I end up going to the gym many weekday evenings. Then there is the act of reaching out to those who have the means and willingness to listen and console.
I have realized one other thing: I have been seeking out passion in the wrong places. In toxic drama, shouting matches, self-sabotage. I literally had to google what ‘healthy passion’ would look like in an interpersonal relationship for the sake of having a reference point. Here’s what I’m starting to think it might take the shape of:
- You have stories to share with each other. While shared experiences are great, it sure would be nice to step away from each other from time-to-time and discuss a side to the world that is alien to the other person, while speaking about it intricately, with the intimacy of having fully experienced it, bringing it to life with the vividness of your expression.
- Healthy, respectful debates around your differences. Passion seems to arise from tensions, which in turn comes from differences. This can either result in squabbles and painful drama, or it can be channeled into discussions and debates. It sounds like a rather emotional adventure to me – being introduced to a whole new world, a very different way of approaching life and the things it entails.
- Realizing that while there’s so much you have in common, the other person is still a different soul and entity experiencing things in an entirely different way, even if it is only by virtue of possessing a different physical body. The possibility of vicariously experiencing a human experience beyond your own sounds refreshing!
- Sharing new experiences together – learning about the other as they might be learning about themselves when put in foreign environments, dicey situations, and tricky relationships! Sounds like it has all the makings of a passionate experience indeed.
Newness, curiosity, openness, adventure, exploration – these are the things that healthy passion seems to be made of! And that’s what I seek to fill my life with these days. š