An Easer of Pain

I hear a lot of things.

I hear about pain.
People with eating disorders write to me. They email me, Facebook message me, tweet me, text me, comment on my eating disorder recovery site (www.arielleleebair.com) - and they tell me how they hurt emotionally. They tell  me about the struggle of recovery, the desire to be thin, the trauma of their pasts, their dysfunctional families, their experiences of being bullied, their self-hatred. They tell me about all the evils of eating disorders, because they know I understand. They know my own history allows a kind of window into their lives. They know I know their pain is real. They know I'll validate them, but also try to help them, give them hope. I listen to the women in the support group I lead and sometimes the pain is thick within the room. I want to erase it, chase it out. Their pain follows me, but I don't feel weighed down. I feel involved, purposeful, ready. Ready for what? I often ask myself when that word pops into my mind. Ready to send my rays of hope, light, joy into other lives.

I hear about pain.
Literal pain. My husband suffers from fibromyalgia and miofascial pain. It's intense, it's constant, and there is no relief. He has described it to me this way: "It feels as though my whole body is dipped in a vat of battery acid. Forever." The pain, which is worst in his face, head, and neck as well as the left side of his back, leg, and the soles of his feet, is something which I cannot understand. I try and I empathize, but I can't truly know. The pain is so bad and the feeling of it so constricting that he has said it feels as if he is in an incredibly tight bear hug 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, every single moment. It makes it hard for him to ever get a full breath. He tells me this. People who pass him in every day life cannot tell that he is in excruciating pain. He doesn't show it. He may be quiet, he may be reserved, he may not be smiling much of the time - but they don't attribute that to the incessant pain he is in all the time. They just think it's him. Well, it's not him. It's the pain.

Sometimes, at home, he inhales deeply and with effort. I can hear the breath shaking out of him. He gulps air in and out a few times in a row. It sounds exaggerated. But it's just him attempting to get what feels like a full breath, without that horrid constricting feeling that never lets go. Sometimes, at home, he cries out in pain. It hardly ever happens, but sometimes he allows the verbal reaction. He tells me about it. About the doctors he's seen, the clinics he's visited, the treatments he's had. Nothing has worked. He tells me about medications he's tried that regulate pain receptors in the brain or change hormonal imbalances (like for depression) and ones that are just heavy duty pain relievers. He tells me about the time he went gluten free and all the other natural remedies and diets he hoped would alleviate even a small bit of the constant pain. Nothing has worked. He tells me about his herbs - the natural, fresh from the literal Amazon herbs and some Chinese ones too - which help him just enough so that he can work 40 hours without the pain debilitating him completely. They give him energy, because a huge part of fibromyalgia is often chronic fatigue.

The herbs are one of only two things he credits with getting him through each day. The other thing is me.

I hear about pain.
I'm at a domestic violence shelter 16 hours per week. I'm a graduate intern counselor and I see women face to face who have endured the most horrible and unthinkable abuse. I do individual one hour counseling sessions and just when I think I've heard it all, I hear some more. Sometimes they don't even have to speak - I just see the pain in their eyes. Sometimes I answer the 24 hour helpline and I hear the pain in the voices on the other end. The desperation. The sadness. The hurt. I often have the feeling that the phone - tangible receiver, cord, and all - is the last thread of hope for them. When I walk the halls of the shelter and see the children there, I hear pain. I can hear it in the laughter - it's the something that's missing. The something that's missing from that childlike laughter is what the pain has done.

I could go on. There is so much pain. In the world, certainly. In my country, definitely. In my state, yes. In my city, of course. But even within my own little microcosm of my every day life, there is so much pain.

I hear a lot of things.
That's how I began this post. "I hear a lot of things."
And somehow, I wrote about pain.
I hear a lot of things. But mostly, I hear about pain.

I live life, love life, enjoy life. I have hope, love hope, and give hope. I can't erase pain. I can't blot it out for people. But I can ease it. That's what I want to be, at my core. I mean, I want to be a writer, a helper, a woman, wife, sister, daughter, friend, social worker, counselor, reader, blogger, learner, dreamer... but mostly, I want to be an Easer of Pain. How lucky I am to have hit the nail on the head - to finally understand what my calling is at its most basic level. I've peeled the onion and I've realized... maybe just tonight, just now, in the writing of this post. I want to be so many things and do exactly what I'm doing in life. But beneath the social worker, group leader, recovery blogger, writer, eating disorder activist, wife, friend, counselor.... I want to be an Easer of Pain.