Transcending the Shitty Parts

Some things are supposed to hurt.

I have pneumonia, and delusionally believed that taking it easy for a few days would mean I got a lot of work done. :) Instead, my brain has been foggy and it’s hurt quite badly to breathe, thus I have spent most of my time lying in bed, eating chicken soup and banana bread, and watching “Abbott Elementary”.

I should write about what I’ve learned from being sick, I thought, and sat down earlier this weekend to a blank page that remained blank. And maybe there is some grand lesson I’m being taught right now, but honestly, (and this is some major growth) I don’t even care if there is or not. Maybe some things are just supposed to be experienced, not learned from.

The idea that has been circulating in my head lately, and that has certainly cropped up in the midst of recovering, is that you cannot transcend the shitty parts of life—or the shitty parts of yourself, for that matter. You cannot bypass what is hard or difficult or tragic. And, as I know now, you can’t pretend you don’t have a lung infection when you do.

. .

Not being able to transcend what sucks has been a consistent theme of my life. I spent years trying to “heal” myself, and even believed for a time that healed was an attainable goal. I wrote in November of 2022 about when this perspective began to disintegrate within me.

Always Whole, Never Healed  (Embracing and incorporating the places that hurt.)

The quest for healing is often propelled by the intoxicating idea that we must improve ourselves enough to fit in and function ‘normally’ in a society in which many facets should, quite frankly, not be normal. Without exploring alternatives to what healing might represent, it remains to be portrayed as this sort of journey to an unattainable and elusive destination. 

…Is “normal and regulated” a baseline we should really be striving for? So that, what, we can produce more stuff, move more quickly, or not feel sad?…Instead of aiming to seamlessly integrate our afflictions to operate ‘normally’, perhaps we respectfully approach them with curiosity. Perhaps partnering with our dysfunction will birth new ideas and creations, and widen our capacity to experience deeper levels of connection and compassion.

The most sustainable healing, for me, calls for a dynamic relationship between my inner world and my outer world. Healed, for me, is no longer a hungry climb toward perfection, nor is it “baseline good and functional.” Healing is a worthy collaboration with the parts of me that continue to hurt and the parts of me that are fresh and vibrant. It is ongoing growth and the patient incorporation of the lessons I am learning. Healing is the consistent willingness to engage with what is alive and with what is dying, around me and within me.

In more words, healed—psychologically speaking, that is—is a fictitious place that no longer feels exciting to try and get to. There is not a world in which we are totally healed, or where everything feels good and we are able to easily navigate it all.

This lesson is hard: I am constantly distracted by the idea that I really can transcend the parts of life that suck and the shitty parts of myself. At the very least, I’ve thought, I could let them all go.

But letting go is not always possible—another thing I’m beginning to understand.

To quote myself again, from What You Ignore Is What Eats You (Pretending that something real has gone is called delusion.)

So much of self-growth is about practicing letting go; turns out, you can’t always let go entirely. It might be that trying to let go of everything is just another form of evasion; a kind of spiritual bypassing. You don’t have to let go of everything, and unless you’re enlightened, you can’t. You can be well and lead a beautiful life, even if your baggage, problems, and disorders are still hooked to you in some way.

So, if you can’t transcend the shit, or let go of it, what do you do? The answer to this question is possibly as simple as it gets: you accept it. You make space for it. You let yourself feel the shitty parts of life, and you get as close as you can toward allowing those things. Acceptance is not a passive state: it is a surrendered state, one in which you give up the illusion of control and accept that what is real is real.

Life will never be totally shiny and polished; neither will you. Wouldn’t it be boring, to not have problems; to function ‘normally’ all the time? What would we really do if our nervous systems were perfectly regulated and we loved everything about ourselves? If there was no deviation from baseline good and functional?

I don’t know. But I think it would get old pretty quickly.

I do know, however, that crisis leads to progress, and that suffering offers grace (that’s Ram Dass). I do know that I’m here to experience the rich fullness of life, and that includes all of the things I hate. I’m here for the mess, the rawness, the wild and ugly life that can only be lived through me.

. .

Some things are supposed to hurt. Some things are meant to be awful and excruciating and scary. We can’t opt out of grief or loss or pain; there isn’t an option. I think that our best bet for dealing with things we would rather transcend or let go of is to simply accept that they are there. And if they’re there, we can feel them. It might not be so bad.

A mantra I like to use when I’m in turmoil or something is hard is ‘I wonder what’s on the other side of this pain.’

It works; grounds me in the awareness that everything is transitory, and that this moment will yield to the next one. A few days ago, this mantra carried me right to the ER at 2am to a pneumonia diagnosis. And now, I’m here; not yet sure what will happen next.

May you all accept what is here, even if it is shitty. You can handle it.

Maggie