Hurt so good.
Tonight I am spending an hour or two using a lacrosse ball to target and destroy the various stress knots that I develop in literally every part of my body. The lacrosse ball acts as an unyielding source of pressure, activated with the basic application of body weight. I lie on my back and place the ball where my body tells me it's needed, and try to relax into it. That's usually the easy part. The hard part is incorporating motion, which causes the muscles and tendons surrounding the ball to flex and move around it. Depending on how stressed I have been, and how recently I have remembered to stretch, the amount of pain caused by the motion can be slight to excruciating (it is never, unfortunately, nonexistent). When working on my back, the goal is to raise my arms from being by my sides on the floor straight up in an arc over the top of my head, and suspend them as close to the floor as I can get without letting gravity take over. Which sounds so ridiculously easy. But find just the right spot in the muscles of your shoulder to place that lacrosse ball, and I have felt enough pain doing that motion to cry out. Brandon will watch me go through this process from across the living room, and ask me why I put myself through it if it hurts so much. "Because I know it will feel better in the end," I say. And it really will, despite the deep breaths and constant biting of my tongue it takes to get me through the whole process (it takes up to two hours because I usually do my neck, back, glutes, and legs; sometimes also my arms, against the wall).
Some good things can only come to you if you suffer a bit for them, if you go through a certain amount of pain for them. The state of relaxation my body is able to attain after I have gone through the very painful process described above is worth it, every time. When I eat spicy food, I need it to burn a bit, to hurt just enough to truly be called spicy. If something is too bland, I get cranky about it, like it's not worth it if it doesn't hurt a little. Only if it has that element of pain will it really be satisfactory. The times in my life that I have become desperately infatuated with someone, the butterflies in my stomach become so frenzied that my stomach will hurt after enough days of sustained ardor. It will ache and feel as though it's jumping within my body, but in the end I don't really mind; I know the ache can be a precursor to physical and emotional experiences which will be beyond worth it. It's the ache of anticipation, which can prove most satisfying when you've had to endure it for a while, and can therefore appreciate relief so much more.
To me at least, life often feels like a long process of suffering through a certain amount of pain in order to reach a better state. There was a point during the second year of my master's degree program that I spent the entirety of every session with my therapist crying. Talking also, but every word shook as it came out of me, and I went through entire boxes of tissues as the tears just continued to stream down my face. My parents' marriage was imploding, I was waiting for my father do die from his alcoholism, I had been stupid enough to commit myself to working full-time and going to grad school full-time so I could prove I was just that fucking capable. The pain of it all was so exhausting, and drained me to the bone on a daily basis for several months. Like the lacrosse ball's effect on the right spot in my body, it was an excruciating process. But also like the lacrosse ball's long-term effect, I know it was the only way I could have possibly made it to where I am today, a better place.
Hurting is most definitely a part of life, however I have learned that it doesn't have to be the biggest part, nor does the hurt have to overwhelm things like love and happiness. It's part of the deal and always will be, but rather than being the end result it's really just a step in the process. A hurt today doesn't mean there can't be happiness tomorrow; in fact, there likely will be, because getting through the hurt is the way to get to happiness. In that sense at least, hurt doesn't have to be a devastating thing at all; hurt can be so, so good.