Hurt

I focused on the pain, the only thing that's real. --Nine Inch Nails

It gets boring if you talk about your hurts too long. --A Florida fishing captain, as related in the book "Fly Fishing for Sharks."


What do we do with the hurt, the hurt that has been visited upon us and that we have brought to bear on others? The hurt that has accumulated in us like mercury in fish tissues, sometimes seeping out like toxins, rotting the flesh, revealing itself as each slice of the fillet knife peels away another layer?
One option involves suppression. One therapist with whom I spoke likened it to stuffing dirty socks down your pants. They get musty after a while. Some people appear capable of tucking those dirty socks away and apparently not thinking about them again. They create their own reality and exclude such poisons. To some extent, I envy people with this capability. I can't do it. Maybe if I practice.
Another option involves confronting the hurt head-on. This approach has its drawbacks, principally sadness. I think some people might be biologically predisposed to dwell on the hurt. Still others appear to believe that it elicits sympathy or otherwise makes them noticeable.
People can cross a point at which pains becomes so much a part of their fiber that no way exists to completely escape. Cognitive therapy can help manage the pain. Hard-to-implement techniques exist that can help one to, instead of dwelling on the pain, letting it flow on down the river, away, out to the sea. One ally in letting the pain go would be a faulty memory. A sharp memory can be as much a curse as blessing. Maybe electroconvulsive therapy's effectiveness stems partly from memory impairment.
The optimal approach to dealing with life's tribulations would be to acknowledge them, process them and let them take their rightful place in the dustbin of history. Doing so would free a person from the burden of bearing so much weight so much of the time. You also wouldn't be the person who lives a life denying that the pain ever existed in the first place. Such denial informs all manner of subsequent relationships and deprives them of the potential richness.
But, alas, this resembles a voice in the wilderness. Most people I've observed go about living within the cocoon of their own perceived reality, wary of venturing forth for fear of the predatory bird awaiting beyond the shelter. And they don't know how to contend with the other strange creature, the one who acknowledges the pain, the one whose candor takes people aback, whether that person has let the pain go or not.
Kids, as with everything else, complicate the matter. Their disappointments pose much more of a challenge. I can process my own pain, rationalize in a way that might make me feel better and ultimately face up to it. But I can't get inside their heads and give them the coping techniques or the fortitude. The inability to do that compromises my capability to lessen my distress that has resulted from their distress.