The Honor in Pain

image from ThingsWeForget

“I wake up, feeling nothing. At one point, I was looking forward to seeing him with another woman so I can feel again, but when I did, that thing that I was scared of happened. I felt nothing.” (7 September 2011)


Last night, after a wonderfully challenging Quiz Night in Capricciosa, Greenbelt 3, three of my friends and I opted to end the night with a round of alcohol. Yes, we do one rounds, surprisingly and we are capable of doing a post game analysis of a Quiz Night pretty well, too. Naturally, after what seemed like a never ending round of jokes oozing with sarcasm and a plan to organize THE party of the century, we got into a discussion of our mutual status of WALANG WALA (totally nothing). It all started with a realization of my and another friend’s inability to write again. If you know me, you will understand the frustration that I am feeling for being unable to write anything. I am pretty passionate about capturing raw emotions and writing about them in my blog. I feel that through that exercise, I am able to treasure extraordinary memories so I can look back someday with a contented look in my eyes.

Something must be wrong. A Eunice that does not feel is not the real Eunice. I am able to extract feelings by merely looking at a stupid chair, how can I not feel anything about something?

I have been wondering for the past months about what state I am currently in. I’ve been running around this city and a few cities outside, doing everything and nothing. I go home late, feeling happy about what I have accomplished and drifting to sleep with a smile on my face. Yet, when I wake up, I feel that nagging feeling of emptiness. It’s like I am complete but someone or something has taken away a part of me that I can never get back. Then I get dressed and that fleeting feeling of emptiness disappears, magically and alarmingly.

Then, Kris Aquino dragged me to hell, err reality. While I was preparing to go to work this morning, I was half watching, half deciding what to wear, when Melissa Ricks began to talk about her breakup with her long term non-boyfriend who recently announced that the breakup was mutual only to be refuted by Melissa’s silence when asked to confirm that declaration. Kris said, and I quote, “Boy always tells me that you have to honor your pain.”

CRAP. You have to honor your pain. And just like that, everything became clear. It actually is true. Although the happiness that I feel with the people I spend my time with, I believe, is genuine –and I’d like to think that their happiness is, too… almost all of us are actually in pain. We talk about it, jokingly, sometimes with a hint of wisdom but we never really dwell on them. May it be the pain of not being able to love, to the pain of not being loved back, the pain of doing something that you’d rather not do, the pain of not doing anything, the pain of doing everything and not being recognized for your everything - we all are in different levels and categories of pain.

We are not honoring our pain. We are looking past them, like they are informal settlers being concealed by pretentious colorful walls along a main highway. We know they exist but we’d rather ignore them because honestly, it scares the shit out of us.

I remember writing about living with pain and I said, “One thing I learned about living is that, “Pain is inevitable.” The moment you are able to come to terms with that, you realize that pain, really, is just a wonderful front act. You get hurt, once in a while, with some periods more painful than the others.”

Therefore, I take it back, once in a while, you have to let pain get to you. You have to sometimes honor your pain, dwell on your weakness and allow others to be strong for you, instead. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have anything to look forward to.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again –“Live with pain but don’t live IN it.” Honor your pain so you can honor happiness more. A real victory is not won from beginning to end. A real victory is being hurt, injured, and scarred for most of the battle but emerging as the survivor. A real victory takes away everything from you only to give back everything and so much more.

A real victory honors pain but lives through it so stories may be told and memories may be passed on. A real victory looks at pain through its mocking eyes and says to its face, “I honor you but, bring it on, motherfucker.”