What To Do With Pain

My son,

At our first ultrasound, your mother's hand was open beside her head. She reached for me. I made her reach twice.

My hand stayed in my lap. My phone sat in my pocket like a weight. My thumb kept waking up on its own.

Not because I didn't love her. Not because I didn't want you. Part of me still believed stress was the same thing as responsibility. My mind was counting what I hadn't finished: emails, loose ends, the next meeting, the one after that.

Then the screen changed.

You.

A small shape. A first outline. The beginning of your face in grainy light.

I saw your first images and was still thinking about emails.

Your mother kept watching. She kept breathing. She kept being there.

I sat inches away and disappeared anyway.

I hate this about myself, so I am writing it down the way it happened. This is one form pain can take. It does not always look like collapse. Sometimes it looks like a man staying busy enough that nobody can ask what is happening inside him.

I learned that reflex early. When the floor felt uncertain, I tightened my grip. When fear rose, I made a plan. When I didn't know how to stay with a feeling, I gave myself more work. Those moves can keep a person standing. They can't teach him how to be reachable.

I don't want you to believe that being useful is the same as being well.

Pain will come for you. Someone will disappoint you. Someone will leave. You will fail yourself. You will hurt someone you love. You will lose things you thought were secure.

When that happens, tell the truth before the pain starts making decisions in secret.

Say: I am hurt. I am scared. I miss them. I feel ashamed. I do not know what to do next.

Those sentences are not a surrender. They are a way to keep the wound from becoming the only language you have.

Don't make the people closest to you pay for pain they didn't create. If you aim your hurt at someone nearby, repair quickly. Let somebody witness you before you're polished. Choose carefully, but choose someone.

I'm learning to choose witnesses too. I'm telling the truth on paper. I'm letting your mother see it. I'm asking her to pull me back when my eyes go away and my hand goes cold. I'm asking for help instead of making another private promise I never have to prove.

Next time, my phone stays out of the room. I know what I do when it is in my pocket. I know how I disappear.

I can't keep every wound from reaching you. I can try to give you a language for the wound, so you don't have to turn it into silence, cruelty, or a life spent proving you were never hurt.

Pain is not a verdict. It is not permission to make somebody else inherit the damage.

Stay open long enough to learn what it is telling you. Then let the people who love you help you carry what you cannot carry alone.

~ Dad