Back Pain: Testing My Joy

It was a few days before my back surgery. I could stand for maybe 30 seconds before the pain hit. Maybe a minute. It would start in my hip and spread down through my thigh, down my calf, and into my foot. But it was breakfast time, and I was home alone, and I was hungry.

I made it to the kitchen. I really wanted some eggs. Scrambled would be fast, I thought. Standing at the stove, I can feel time running out, and the eggs are not cooking fast enough. “Come on!”, I actually said aloud. The pain is here. I get the eggs on a plate. The table isn’t far. I turn, walk a few feet, and it is too much. I can’t make it. I go down. The eggs don’t matter. The pain is all there is.

I am lying on the kitchen floor and I am screaming. It helps the pain to scream. I am screaming at the top of my lungs. My hip and my leg are consumed with ripping fire. If I can scream loud enough, I can match the pain, and I can almost bear it. Not that I have a choice.

And then in the middle of this agony, I realize, “Huh, you’re not actually unhappy”. Sure, I am in an insane amount of pain, but I am not unhappy. Rather, I have this odd sense of joy. Or rather, I still have my joy. Yes, I want this to be over, want to be out of the pain, but it is just pain. It is probably the most intense pain I have ever felt. I am thinking “God, this fucking hurts! But I am so alive! What a ride! Wow! Jesus, this is intense, I didn’t know I could feel this! FUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!”.

But I am not making up the stories I used to in these moments. I am not making up the story that I won’t have a job, or that I won’t have a family, or that I won’t be loved. I do not tell myself, “See. This proves it. Here you are, not good enough.” I do not go “woe is me.”

It is just a sensation. Well, not just a sensation. A big god dammed horrible sensation. But here’s the thing: The pain is independent of who I am. I am here to experience it and there is not meaning to it beyond just the pain. There is no meaning to it about who I am. The pain I used to create⎯the real suffering⎯was the pain of how I diminished myself. The deeper truth is that I was already feeling unworthy⎯the pain was already there: the stories of woe I made up arose out of my deepest core pain of believing I was nothing.

So in that moment on the kitchen floor, I felt like I had passed a test: Had I really transformed? Did I really believe and know my own perfection and the love that I am? Yes, my deep joy in life comes from feeling the love that I am, and nothing, not even this excruciating pain, can change that. Love and joy are independent of the landscape of my life, independent of the feelings I have in the moment. I can still have my joy when I am sad, afraid, or angry. Or happy.