“I put the sword down and dive into the pain.  I may have paid full price for each mistake but I think I’ve finally learned.” Pink.  Humans don’t cope well with mistakes.  We like people to see us in control and like we know what we are doing at all times.  Admitting the wrong, the chaos, the fact that we are human and messed up hurts.  And this pain hurts more than anything I’ve experienced before.  I feel wrecked, raw, ripped open, caged.  The universe will give us signs and hints along the way and if we don’t learn the lesson then it will hit us with a 2×4.  It takes a long time to accept the lesson sometimes but it’s important that once we get it, we don’t repeat it. In order for me to learn this time I can’t avoid the hurt and I need to acknowledge every part of this, the hurt and I have to embrace what that means.  That I have work to do and I was not a victim in this process.  This was a result of my actions as well.

Acceptance and surrender are not giving up and I have to tell myself that so often it makes me sick.  Every ounce of me feels like fire and like there is always something to be done.  In this instance there is literally nothing I can do and when I have nothing to do I feel weak.  But given the circumstances, I’m seeing it like this: the only “doing” I can do is to decide.  Decide and act based on that decision, in alignment with that decision, and the rest gets done.  It can hurt when we accept pain because, for those of us who struggle to emotionally regulate/deal with control, it feels like we will drown in it and that we will be there forever.  In time we understand that isn’t true, but in that moment it feels like being pulled down to the depths.  We have to let go so we can get our bearings because the body will right itself.  We can tell the mind to get out of the way and we will find that direction.  We don’t have to keep diving down, we can come up for air.

So when we look at emotional regulation and feeling like we want to avoid the pain, I want to encourage remembering this about swords: yes they cut and maim, but they also sever and cut away. While we mourn the loss of the whole, it’s fair to consider if we lose it, was it ever necessary to begin with?  Or did it serve its purpose and its time to move on?  There is a difference between the cut to sever versus the puncture that won’t close.  The severing hurts at first but it heals.  And often we confuse the sever for the puncture.  At times it’s a risk because we don’t know if diving in means a slice or being impaled, but if we are to learn to cope, then we must dive in.  The pain is temporary.  Sometimes we have to look and see we are the ones holding the sword, either to hurt ourselves or to fend off imaginary foes who aren’t there.  The mind will tell us these things exist.  We can put it down and see we are creating that pain.