Whatever Will Be Will Be

There was a time when I honestly believed that there was only a certain amount of pain one had to go through in life. Because manic-depressive illness had brought such misery and uncertainty in its wake, I presumed life should therefore be kinder to me in other, more balancing ways.

-- Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind

For various reasons, I experienced a lot of pain in my childhood and teens. By the time I reached adulthood, certain areas of my life were pain-saturated. I believed that since I had suffered what felt like a lifetime of pain so early in life, I was owed an easier time after that. A lot of the anger I felt towards life in my thirties came from the realization that God/the Universe/Life was not being easier on me. In fact, the pain seemed to continue unabated.

But the reality is that there is no force in the cosmos that looks down with pity and says, "wlotus has been through so much. Let me turn back this disaster and that hurt, and heaven forbid I let that emotional trauma darken her door! She deserves mercy!" The reality is that life in all of its ugliness will happen, whether I have unresolved pain from my past or not. I've been in the process of accepting that for some time, and I have a lot less anger as a result.

The other reality is that good things will happen in the midst of the ugly and boring, too. My relatively new ability to recognize and hold onto those things (now that I've had the time to do a considerable amount of healing work) helps me through the ugly and boring.