all of us are broken. some of us just don't know it. but being broken is nothing to be ashamed of.
but sometimes there are phases of intense pain and brokenness that seem different to me. these feel worse than our general human suffering, but hopefully are temporary.
i feel like a hound dog, always sniffing out the pain in people. i like most everyone i meet, and i'm happy to talk about anything. we don't have to get deep. but if i get a whiff of suffering and achiness in you, i will sidle up to you and nudge my cold nose against your knee until you either turn to engage or escape.
it's not because i enjoy people's struggles. it's because the people who have experienced loss and deep pain are the ones i listen to and the ones from whom i learn. and there's something about the sharing that lightens it for both the sharer and listener. but the sharing is the trickiest part. sharing after you've come out of the hard phase is one thing, but discussing it during can feel impossible.
people compare depression, suffering and trials to burdens. we are admonished to "lay our burdens down." i understand that. it seems to me though, that some struggles run deeper. some of us have an ache that has snaked it's way down into the skin, passed through the bone, and threaded into the crevices and hollows of our marrow. they've become such a part of us we no longer recognize them as foreign and unwelcome in our lives. in comparison to this type of brokenness, a burden sounds almost easy. a burden is separate, an item you choose to carry or ditch.
some of us experience things that change our emotional makeup for years, for entire lives. other people are so weathered by brutalities in this world that they absorb them and are crippled by them. regardless of why, there are times we carry such pain around inside of us, that laying the burden of it down is not a conceivable option.
meds, mindfulness, prayer can help, but what i find fascinating is the way people help tease it out of one another the way one might gently pull or comb out a tangle knot of hair. a really deep pain must be drawn out carefully, if at all. that's why it's so powerful in the first place; it's so embedded that to have it rise to the surface in us to share with another person feels like it would kill us. when i imagine the hardest experiences i've had, coupled with their effects on me and the ones around me,, well...to pull that bundle to the surface seems akin to reaching into my bones and pulling a jagged shard of glass up and out, slashing me from the inside out until it reaches the air.
but then in walks art.
music, pictures, poetry, dance...these can nudge the pain from a safe distance. you hear, see or touch something that resonates with that deep pain. the pain wakes, but doesn't rise in a jagged destructive rush up and out of you. the broken places begin to unfold cautiously, an ear perking up to a kindred spirit. it hears someone who understands.
when a direct conversation or explanation of the pain is impossible for us, the minor notes of a song may pluck at something inside us that's been hibernating or playing dead. if it can wake without a start, maybe it can be teased into something willing to lift it's head a bit. when you can't put something into words, maybe rilke already did. maybe a poet tells your story for you when your tongue is bound and scared. maybe a dancer reminds you of the way you were created to move, talk, free, flowing and open.
maybe a friend alludes to his past that hints faintly of your present. you sidle closer and nudge for more. if they share, it helps because it's like they are putting words to a pain you cannot verbalize yet. and that's good, because we all want the knot combed out, we just can't do it alone.