Pain.
“Do you want to quit, Gorman?”
“No, drill sergeant.”
“Are you sure? You look pretty miserable.”
“I’m sure, drill sergeant.”
He saw it in my face, the rage. The year of my basic training, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, the location of my rage and misery, saw many soldier suicides and catastrophic injuries from training. (So many, that the following year, they revamped the training to take a - lighter - touch). The year, 2002, was right smack in the middle of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ era of service, and many in my unit used “telling” as a route out of the hellscape during our 12-week training. When the drill sergeant saw my rage, we’d crawled on our elbows up and down a rocky hill for over an hour. In the shower that night, I scrubbed a layer of dirt off the roof of my mouth with my fingernails. Processing the pain, all the girls were silent in the showers that night, no friendly banter, no pride in not quitting. Maybe life would have been easier if we had.
The women of Fort Leonard Wood circa August 2002.
Pain is an old friend.
Cancer is just the tip of the iceberg of the dark, difficult, painful shit I’ve been through. Physically abusive brother, pathologically narcissistic father, my parent’s messy divorce, sexual assault, drug addiction, alcohol addiction, the death of my brother of brain cancer at 26, my biological father one year later to the day from medical maleficence, my stepdad/dad died of cancer one year after that, deaths of all my grandparents in messy ways by the time I was 30, all my savings stolen by an ex-boyfriend, the Army experience, almost two decades with an eating disorder. Not to mention all the real wacky, harmful, disturbing things I did while on drugs and alcohol. On paper, it appears I’ve lived life through a steady filter of pain and suffering. I have every right to be much more messed up than I am.
Before bed a few nights ago, I was hit with a debilitating migraine. Pulsing, throbbing, relentless pain that I felt helpless to overcome. The only relief came in sitting straight up in bed and staring out the window, which I did for hours. Heating pads, Tylenol, icy hot - somehow, I fell asleep that night. Startled awake. Pain. Red hot, pinching, burning, radiating pain from my neck down through my left shoulder. Hit the nurse button. Request Tylenol. Hang the limb over the side of the bed. Throw it around, over my head, side to side, trying to get the blood flowing. No relief. 10/10 pain. “No quitting, Hayley.” I said out loud to myself. A one-woman hype machine, I began naming the pain as I frantically rubbed the tight, twitching muscles. “This pain is the color red. It is hot and sticky. It travels.” Naming, naming. Rubbing, rubbing. The Tylenol came in, and the nurse grabbed me some tissues. Tears had come without invitation, streaming down my face.
Hours later, Evan sitting on the couch visiting me, and the pain returned. With it came a rage. The rage was black. It swallowed up my chest and throat. It burned like a flame thrower, blasting the heat at Evan and consuming the room. We couldn’t escape it, it just had to burn out of me until the fuel was gone. Evan vigorously rubbed my neck until the pain quieted, and so did I.
Spiraling back to the coolness of myself, I resisted spiraling into shame and guilt. The rage spilled over because I was in pain. After a lifetime of pain and a year of chronic, life-altering, unexpected physical trauma from pain, I feel afraid of it. When pain finds me now, I’m not as stable in my strength to endure it, this 100-pound body that has been blasted with chemo for 18 months. It makes me afraid I’ll need more help and longer stays in the hospital. I’m afraid it’s not just pain, that it may be cancer. Add to this all that feedback I’ve received as a woman in the world, as a soldier, as a “survivor” is that allowing the anger to be seen in its full expression and not controlling it shows I’m crazy or weak or both.
“Do you want to quit, Gorman?”
“No, drill sergeant.”
“Are you sure? You look pretty miserable.”
“I’m sure, drill sergeant.”
As the shoulder pain quieted, a new pain burst through in the form of the sorest throat I’ve ever experienced. The Methotrexate I’m on is notorious for causing mouth sores, and my mouth has been aching for a week until BOOM! This morning, I’m swallowing glass. Eating and drinking feel impossible, every swallow requiring hype-up Hayley to come back online for the courage. My main calories are cherry-flavored Hall's Extra Strength cough drops and throat spray. There is comfort in knowing this is just human pain and not cancer pain. But really, really, really? This shit SUCKS. That rage lingers right below the surface. The pain of cancer, extended hospital stays, chemo symptoms of exhaustion, mouth sores, and GI issues are painful. Shoulder pain? A sore throat? Migraines? Damn, ya’ll. Too much.
I think back to basic training, all of us girls in the shower, bruised and bloody, quietly treating one another's wounds, feeling we’d been violated, not speaking the truth many of us felt in debriefing years later; that we should have spoken up. We should have raged, even just with one another.
Richard Rohr writes that you can only lead others to the depths of which you have been led. You can only transform people to the depths that you have been transformed. Pain has shaped me and transformed me, not “for better or worse” but into an entirely new person. I am a person who names the pain instead of being consumed by it. I am a person who pulls herself out of the shame spiral after anger and listens to what the anger is teaching me. I am a person who is quick to apologize (sorry, Evan) and quick to forgive. I am a person who rages when there has been an injustice, who would break the silence in that shower and speak truth to power. And, sometimes, I’m the person who rages against a sore throat and shoulder because that shit is annoying. (I’m also the person who recognizes I need about $10k in therapy to work through all this pain).
May we all greet pain as a great teacher and friend. May we listen to what it’s telling us. May we set ourselves free from perfection. May our muscles be loose, our throats open, and our hearts on standby, ready to love ourselves into be-ing.
My basic training roomies, two of the powerful women with whom I wouldn’t have been able to survive it all without.
