Autumn is a Lonely Season

“When it’s dark enough, you can see the stars.”

– Persian proverb

There are many different kinds of pain in the world: physical, mental, emotional. And even though our emotions are so much less tangible than our bodies or our minds, somehow when they hurt, they hurt the most. But even emotional pain comes in so many varieties. You can be rejected, insulted, ignored. You can feel great loss or disappointment. Or the cold sting of betrayal. But it’s not just the source of the pain that matters: it’s the reaction. There can be broken hearts and then there are hearts that are simply beaten down. Trampled on. Walked all over and poked and prodded and squeezed until there is no spring left in the muscular tissue that used to pump life through your veins. The broken hearts stop -- they take a break to recover and come back almost as good as new. But being trampled on doesn't feel like enough to make you stop. It hurts in ways you can't imagine enduring, but just not in a way that makes you retreat. There’s just enough left over that makes you want to hold on despite everything -- despite the fact that what used to pump life now just twitches once in a while. And that? That’s the worst kind of pain. The kind of pain that takes everything out of you but doesn’t wake you up to reality. Doesn’t make you think: why the fuck am I putting up with this. Instead, you take the pain, wherever it’s coming from, and you keep getting back up, acting as if you aren’t hurt just because you haven't shattered. Not because you want to protect your pride… but because your brain just hasn’t gotten the message that hey, maybe this isn’t supposed to feel like this. So yeah, there are broken hearts and broken bones and they all heal eventually. But we have to let things break before we can try to put them back together.
-Gal