The Society of Solitude
You don't find out what
Hurt is the path it leaves behind. Hurt is everywhere nothing is. Hurt is a shadow cast from no principal. Impossible, yet undeniable.
As far as forces of nature go, Hurt Cheats.
Hurt is a dirty drug, one of those substances that brings no leisure nor entertainment value. Hurt finds Hurt and goes synergetic. Hurt piles on because it flares higher, burns brighter when arranged like charcoals in a barbecue pit.
A human becomes a a stencil cut-out and Hurt sprays around it. Such Silhouettes peel themselves off the walls and off the floors. They slog along, dripping paint like breadcrumbs drawing still others along to where the real party happens: Empty shells lacking depth playacting at being real and vital, taking blind stabs at genuineness and intimacy, all self-congratulatory for Living Full Lives.
Except that the pretty colored spin-art splattering the walls is neither art nor beauty, just orgiastic false-coruscation.
But the Hurt agree it's evidence of the sublime, pretty colors to brighten a day and stave off the Hurting for even just a brief interval—respite where you can get it.
Fear.
Fear is a fertile soil for germinating Hurt. Fear of Loneliness. Of Hurt. Of Solitude. Of Self. Of Awareness. Of Awakeness. Of Choice. Of Free Will. Of Risk. Of Being Wrong. Of Being Right. Of being Alive. Too Alive. Not Alive Enough. Of Being.
The Hurt scatter, climbing into their own shadows in wait for the next lodestone to appear, on which they clamor and claw, hoping for more than the sad Silhouette but too timid to just reach out for it for fear of—yeah, you got it—getting Hurt.
Sure it's a bitch living with Fear. Living with Hurt. Living in Fear that we'll each have to one day accept ourselves as Self-Mendicating bits of flotsam, there but for the grace of no one but our own self and our own accomplishments, our own accumulations of wisdom and ignoble acquisitiveness.
And we do it all Alone. And we do it in spite of and because of Fear. And Hurt.
Or we don't and we die Alone. In Fear. Hurting.
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This is quite moving. Thank you for being brave enough to share it.
One question, hopefully not too dimwitted: what is the difference between Hurt and Pain?
Peace.
On the contrary, your question, to me, is profound. And nuanced.
And I'm forced to admit that you might have stumped me a bit.
Pain, as I was addressing it is a more or less objective thing. Even if it's emotional pain.
Hurt, on the other hand, isn't just the sensation of pain, but also its consequences and those aspects which persist long after the sensation of pain has passed.
I have been told on several occasions—by well-meaning friends, mind you—that I should "just move on" from events which were painful and still hurt. Events which I take out and examine again from time to time because they are still with me.
Is it healthy to obsess over pain that has passed? I think that depends entirely on an honest answer to the question: is the reason I inhabit that past pain for the purpose of learning? understanding? garnering sympathy from others? as a means to not move forward? as a defense mechanism?
On the other hand, artificially "moving on" from real hurt just plows it under, leaving it unexamined, ununderstood. No learning occurs, but rather we just further accumulate wreckage and rust that we are burdened with each time we try to move forward.
In the end, I feel it's your own definitions of each that matter. And the strength and wisdom to keep yourself honest in separating out the two.
Hurt is an ache that eventually fades away.
Pain is raw and hot and angry and has to be beaten with a stick repeatedly before it slithers away.
At least for me.
Tina, I literally could not have said it better myself. Nor did I, obviously.