Pain on Facebook

(crossposted from Facebook)

I’ve been posting a lot of darker stuff about pain and trauma lately, and I’m grateful to all of you for your responses to it. I hope people aren’t worried that I’ve been in a lot of pain lately (although that would be okay); actually this past month has been one of the most joyful in my entire life (and once I understand how that happened I’ll try to write about it too).

I’ve been focusing on pain for a few reasons. One, because it helps me understand and heal myself. Two, because I think there’s a hell of a lot of unacknowledged pain out there, especially male pain, and I hope me publicly naming and holding it can help some of you understand and heal yourselves, too. Three, because I’m done with not saying what I want to say.

But four is specific to the dynamics of Facebook: in the same way that I think talking about pain here can be healing, I worry that talking about joy can be harmful. I worry that it reminds people of what they don’t have in a way that’s not healing, especially the further they are from me socially. And I worry that there’s already an imbalance of people talking about their joy but hiding their pain, which I want to rebalance.

I’m left genuinely unsure about how, if at all, to celebrate the joys in my life publicly on Facebook. I’d be curious to hear opinions, especially from people who do feel hurt by reading about all the good things happening to their friends (message me if you don’t want to write about this in public). Thanks in advance for any contributions.