“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster.” – Andre Aciman
This world’s desire for instant gratification is often at the cost of our well-being.
There’s a societal expectation that we should always be in motion, always working, improving, never stopping. It’s expected that we are always the best version of ourselves, even in the moments where we hardly recognize ourselves. We search for a “cure” or “solution” to our struggles, trying to find any way to relieve the pain of sadness, but in the process, we tend to strip ourselves of the exact thing that makes us human: emotion. Without vulnerability, we are simply robots with nothing more to discuss than a dull world.
Healing is a much better solution than curing, though it is very complex. Healing does not always follow a linear path. It is a journey only you can trudge through. When faced with “hard” or “overwhelming circumstances,” we instinctively attempt to “get better” as quickly as possible. We are driven by pressure to seek immediate fixes to our struggles.
We take weary shortcuts that may lead to dead ends. We prescribe medication, we offer therapy, we’ll prescribe Prozac, lamaticals, Ibilofi, even if they make you numb to any emotion, because at least you won’t suffer anymore – anything to “turn that frown upside down.” These tools are great to use in some circumstances, but in order to tackle one’s mental health, it is imperative that you sail the treacherous ocean that is pain just for a little – long enough to understand what you’re going through.
Every day, people live with depression, anxiety, and trauma. They live with it instead of just struggling. Instead of searching for relief, they learn how to turn survival into thriving and living. They learn that rather than “fixing” your issues, you must search in the deepest layers of yourself to find the roots of your feelings. Many of these people learned from their past that a “cure” comes with a hefty price. We rip out parts of ourselves to fill the mold society has designed for us. The journey of healing requires a willingness to confront discomfort – an understanding that your problems will not disappear completely. When we try to rip our struggles out, we risk taking our happiness with it – our personality.
Avoiding pain is a temptation so deeply rooted in humans that we mistake it as the very essence of our existence. Avoidance is a reflex so deeply ingrained in us since birth that it’s become a way of life. We avoid the parts of ourselves that feel “too complicated” or “too much,” in hopes of making it easier to keep moving on with our lives. We blind ourselves from seeing the depth of our pain. We erase all meaning of the word “fight” because we are so scared to stand swords drawn to our pain. “Cures” rob us of emotion and relation to others.
In the end, we are with hollowed-out versions of what we once were when our pain was a part of us.
