On Learning to Hear the Sound of Your Own Suffering

The Locus of Control in the Density of Ideas 10/15

There’s a line in the prologue of my book that was chosen for the marketing images.

“Today it hit me when he hit me, blood shaking in my brain. Maybe there wasn’t a savior coming. Maybe it was up to me to save me.”

I wish I could tell you this realization was one and done.

Learning to hear and respond to the sound of my own pain is a lesson more akin to a practice than a contained chapter. It's more like water than static pages in life’s textbook. More like yoga than a plot point on a personal timeline. I can’t pick it up or set it down and leave it. I don’t think I’ll ever have it mastered. I practice.

I learn, I lapse. I realize, then revert to the salvation training of my religious childhood. On goes the cycle of remembering and then forgetting to breathe. This often looks like paralysis; like crying and wondering why no one is coming when I lay on the floor in the darkness, searching for the right words to pray, the scene unfolded like a film in my mind.

I’m on the floor in a dark closet. The door opens to reveal a hero on the other side. He reaches down for my hand. “I heard you,” he says. “I have the solution. I’ve come to make it all better.”

Cue the dramatic music. The day is saved and so am I.

Writing it out helps me see