It’s Okay to Smile

Have you ever wondered what it would be like, if you would just leave your traumas behind and move on with life?  Perhaps you’ve toyed with the idea of letting go, but then the unknown seems so scary, as you have not experienced such emotional freedom before.  Maybe you took a small step in that direction, but then retreated back, because a life of known traumas was much more ‘safe’ than a world of unlimited possibilities.  Or perhaps the emotional connections and reliance you have built with the people that hurt you are subconsciously holding you back.  After all, the familiar is much more ‘safer’ to the mind, than unknown territory.

I remember a time in my life when I desperately wanted to let go of my past traumas while at the same time experiencing current ones.  I wanted so much to start my life ‘fresh,’ on a ‘clean slate.’  The idea seemed so appealing at the time.  I would envision how amazing my life would be without all the internal turmoil.  And I did believe that would happen.  However, I found that in reality, I could not make a move beyond five minutes of having let go.  There was something holding me back.  It was not, to my knowledge my attachment to those that had hurt me.  Most definitely not.  There was something more. 

I spent many years denying the role I played in perpetuating my suffering.  Even now, my unconscious mind tells me that I was not to blame – and on the face of it, I was not.  There is no excuse for abuse or neglect when there are rights involved.  It was all well and good to know that.  

However consciously, the signs were all there that I refused to acknowledge.  I knew that life is full of choices, but I chose the easier path.  For me it was ‘safer’ to stay in the cycle of abuse that I had been living in, than to escape it, and ruffle feathers and cause more drama.  It was easier to say that the perpetrator(s) were responsible for my situation.  But over time, and over the course of many years, I began to realise that I was granting my perpetrators more power than they were entitled to.  I also came to understand that happiness is in direct proportion to the choices we make in life.  We can choose to be happy in all situations and experience emotional freedom (while at the same time, trying to change our difficult situation), or we can continue to endure and suffer, and endure and suffer.  And let that cycle continue.

When I first heard this quote, it hit me hard:  Pain is inevitable.  But suffering is a choice.  From that point, I started analysing my life in a way that I had not done so before.  From the viewpoint of someone who has, and who had choices.  As someone who was intelligent enough- and old enough to exercise those choices confidently- but who didn’t.  However, I could hear a little voice inside my head whispering to me- “It’s their fault.  All of them. They did this to you…”

As someone who is naturally analytical, I do spend quite a bit of time thinking about why things happen the way they do.  And also why people behave the way they do.  And my own self was no exception to that analysis.  I knew of my responsibility to keep myself happy or emotionally balanced.  But then, the little voice in my head kept telling me- “You are like this only because person ‘X ‘ did this to you.”  So that became my standard go-to response whenever someone would ask “Hafsah, why do/don’t you…?”  Being conditioned to over-explain (a survival mechanism), I would feel obliged to respond with an appropriately detailed explanation, depending on how much I trusted the one who asked.  Although my explanations were technically correct- yes, trauma can affect a person in so many different ways, I began to use these as the standard matter-of-fact response to end the conversation.  This is how it is, and that’s that.  Ok, next.  My responses did not allow for any movement- any change. 

And so it kept me stagnant.  

The problem with this strategy of explaning and not doing anything to fix the problem, gave me satisfaction for about one minute.  And because it did not ‘solve’ the problem, I still experienced the same difficulties and the same narrow-minded thinking that did not allow room for growth.  Or for other possibilities. 

There was also one other secret that I was holding back, that was keeping me stuck.  And that secret was- the knowledge that if I let go of my traumas now and move on with life, God wouldn’t ‘understand’ how I lived through them.  Life would move on.  We would all move on.  And He wouldn’t ask the perpetrators about what they did.  He wouldn’t ask them.

You see, it wasn’t about getting a badge of honour.  It wasn’t about that at all.  And it wasn’t about getting revenge. That wasn’t really my concern.  It was about God understanding how profoundly- how deeply I had been affected in my every day functioning by the pain caused by the abuse.  And how nonchalantly the people on the ‘sidelines’ who watched and knew about it, were taking it.  And because I had no physical scars to prove that I was ‘scarred,’ how else could I show my pain?  If I began functioning ‘normally,’ healing and putting the past behind me, the pain would reduce, and then so would God’s recognition of just how much I suffered.  How much I suffered.  And how much I sacrificed for Him- by maintaining ties with the various people in my life, and then suffered because of this sacrifice.

It wasn’t about them.  It was about God all along.  It was about being the martyr that in my mind, He wanted me to be.