I remember enjoying the pain I felt during the first time I had my blood drawn. The moment the needle penetrated my skin up until the syringe had filled up with blood was an exhilarating experience and I loved it. I was the kind of person who wasn’t afraid of pain. In fact, I wholeheartedly accepted pain regardless of how it may choose to come into my life. And this has become the manner of how I wish to perceive things including the pain that comes around in relationships. I always remind myself that pain will always be present and inevitable and I do believe that one day I will come across someone who would be equally brave in taking risks for love, no matter how painful it could get.
For years, I clung to this notion, getting into relationships that would only cause trouble. But don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I get into relationships for all the wrong reasons. In the back of my mind, I still picture myself in slo-mo runnings before any climactic kiss, just like how it goes in the movies I saw and the novels I read. I imagined how it would also make my heart stop or make my leg lift out of excitement.
But in my own experiences, my cynical side often feels vindicated. My first kiss happened out of pressure—the kind that didn’t give me enough time to utter a word of consent. It may be just a kiss—too simple a violation to complain about but deep inside, it was a big deal. Despite that, I went along with the moments, along with the touches that did not feel right because I told myself I was brave enough to overcome such fears.
But being fearless about pain didn’t spare me from the idea of spending a lifetime with someone, but the kind of love that risks being hurt is a whole lot more complex than how its shown in the common storylines we encounter in movies. Forever is a lie we have all believed in at some point, but what the films do not often show are the bruises and scars we choose to love for the sake of keeping relationships.
“Too often, I choose to not say no if it means I could grant that someone satisfaction.”
Overtime, I grew accustomed to heartaches the way most people know breathing. From getting myself in destructive situations, to learning how to just go with it, so ready to suffer to the extent, to the point of enjoyment-—I have become a masochist, the worst possible version of myself.
It was my courage against pain after all that was distancing me from the the kind of happiness I had hoped for in the first place, similar to how I may have been placing myself closer and closer to the edge of a cliff without realizing that perhaps all I had to do was to take a step back. My happiness relied on how I could cause someone else’s happiness, rather than how the other person could make me happy. Too often, I choose to not say no if it means I could grant that someone satisfaction.
It was hardly an earned lesson for me to understand that being happy should never depend on someone’s ability to make me feel loved, respected and accepted, nor was it about the efforts I am capable of giving someone. It should depend on me instead—in controlling my own emotions from spilling over. I should have never let anyone compel me to sacrifice my own happiness for their own.
“I came to the realization that I have always been the one at fault for the amount of pain I have welcomed and gotten used to.”
I have been overlooking the amount of pain I was in, that when it all finally comes dawning onto me, all I want to do is to escape it. There were times when I would seek for a different type of pain, something that would require just my own skin and an object sharp enough. Hurting myself only ever felt like a needle entering my skin, even though it would only still be a pain incomparable to the experiences I allowed into my life.
I came to the realization that I have always been the one at fault for the amount of pain I have welcomed and gotten used to. Becoming the person that I am, someone so desperate for a connection I was always so good at misinterpreting, was caused not by my love for pain but the way I let myself be fooled by love.
Indeed, love can be deceiving yet it all comes down to not being blinded by overwhelming emotions. There are realizations perhaps that I can do so much better alone, but that is a difficult mindset to hold on to at just nineteen.
