Labor Pains

Right now I’m working through some difficult emotional pain. Someone I love very much has decided that she doesn’t want me to be a part of her life. I don’t know how long the distance will last. I’m sure her intention is forever, but time has a way of healing wounds. I think the thing that hurts so much is how easy it was for her to cut me off.

I am haunted by questions. There are moments when I feel like I am just someone that people easily can erase from their hearts. Then there are moments when I wonder what kind of heart she must have that it is so easy for her to erase me from her life.

In the midst of this pain, it’s become really hard for me to want to maintain my current relationships. This experience is effectually closing me off. I feel it in my exchanges with my family. I just feel numb. I feel like I can’t bring myself to feel for others because inevitably, they will discard me? No. I know they won’t. I know this is particular to this person, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling wary. I can logically wrap my mind around the proper thoughts, but I can’t undo the unnatural feelings.

I know 2020 has been difficult for so many, for so many reasons. The heartache just hangs in the air. I feel like this year is a period of labor that will birth a new way of thinking and living, but sometimes the contractions are so hard to bear. I read notes of anger and sorrow in almost every post on social media. We can’t dismiss events anymore. They are part of us. As I said yesterday, we are entangled up in this universe, together.

I want to do my part to smooth the transitions, to light the way, to love us all through the difficulties. I want to do these things. And then I remember this personal struggle I’m dealing with and my heart begins to physically hurt.

There has always been struggle. There have always been homeless people, victims of car accidents on the side of the road, other people with sick family members, other people who face racial violence. We protest and move our mouths. We might even send money. But this year, I have noticed that the hurt is making its way from distance spaces into our own private thoughts. The pain is a collective pain. Our pain.

You know what has always been a great way to work through community pain? Live theater. I remember sitting in the library, reading through the microfiche documentation of the Free Southern Theater movement during the 1960s. (I was researching them in 2005, not the 1960s.) The troupe would travel to rural communities throughout the South, putting on Waiting For Godot. After each performance, the actors would discuss the play with the audience members. Fannie Lou Hamer was in one of the audiences. She said that it was difficult to watch the characters just waiting, “We have to stop waiting for people to rescue us. We need to get out and vote ourselves.” (I’m paraphrasing from memory.)

Theater provides on opportunity to look at ourselves and our stories from a better vantage. We see all the parts. We see the allies, the enemies, our strengths, and our weaknesses. It provides the bigger picture.

That’s one answer I know about. I know there are more answers. I know that I need to end this with a big old paragraph about hope and growth and evolution, but you know that. You see it coming too. In the meantime, let’s weather our pains together.