What do you do when you love someone so much that you hurt when s/he hurts, and you know s/he will most likely always be hurting, and there's not a thing you can do about it?
Is it wrong to be glad that you get to love him/her from a distance, and that you don't need to be up close, or does feeling glad about that mean you love him/her less?
Where is God in human suffering?
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About Me
- free_to_dream
- I am a bipolar, Jewish young adult (had my Hebrew birthday, the one I count, and turned 23 this past January) who also suffers from Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy. I love life and I live for my best friends: they are my purpose and my reason for trying so hard. I remain passionately devoted to those I love; I will not let my disorders make me totally self-centered. I like to read, write, and sew. My Rabbinical school plans did not work out, and I am now hoping to go into the field of Early Childhood Education. Please note: I am currently maintaining only Carried in His Hands. Enjoy!
I used to lie in bed, close my eyes and wish, putting every effort into it I could muster, that I could take my girlfriend's pain from her.
ReplyDeleteI would have all of it, 10 times over, if it meant she didn't.
I overpowered her. I learnt everything about her condition (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, type III), I found out everything I could about pain management and I told her what to do.
She didn't want to know, didn't want to talk about it. She wanted to take whatever the doctor could give her, drink a pint and forget it. Then she wanted to do whatever she could in her good hours.
Perhaps it is ironic that I got my wish, sort of. I got all of her pain, maybe more (no one person's pain is truly comparable to another's).
And it turns out, we deal with things in different ways. I feel less angrily invested in fixing my own pain than I did in hers, so I do not research as obsessively for myself as I did for her... but I read a lot and try to help myself.
We are no longer together, but I learnt to let her do what she needed. I got used to ignoring it when she was feeling well and giving her a hug/staying out her of way when that was what she needed. She actually never got that I dealt with my pain differently to her. But I did everything I could to let her deal the way she needed to.
What's my point? Wherever you are, relative to your loved one, you just have to find the balance between doing what they need and what they want.
And it is possibly harder to deal with the person you love most being in pain than it is being in pain yourself. Being relieved that you don't have to deal with their pain 100% of the time does not mean you love them any less. We all need a break sometimes. Just because they don't get one, shouldn't mean you're not allowed one.
Something you learn as a sufferer of chronic pain is that you have to put yourself first sometimes - and that is true of friends and family of chronic pain sufferers too.