I Don’t Feed the Pain

A careful reader will notice something about this site: for a record of rebuilding a life after loss, there is very little pain on these pages.

That’s not because there wasn’t any.

It’s because I refuse to focus on it — to describe it, to circle it, to feed it with my attention. And this refusal isn’t stoicism, and it isn’t avoidance. It is the method itself, maybe the whole of it.

Attention is food. Whatever I rest it on grows. A pain that gets described, retold, examined from every angle — in a journal, in a therapist’s office, in essays like these — is a pain that gets fed, week after week, and a well-fed pain settles in. I’ve written about how the trips let pain in to be absorbed, all the way, once. That is the opposite of feeding it daily portions.

So the focus goes forward, on what comes next. And when what comes next is pain — when it’s standing directly on the path, and there’s no way around it — then I focus on the practical steps I’m taking to walk through it. Not on the pain itself. The plan, the ticket, the routes, the gym, the room full of singing people: every one of those is a step taken through the pain. The pain was there for all of it. It just never got the microphone.

If you came here expecting me to describe how much it hurt, I understand. But I’d be feeding yours too.