politics of pain

on the subjectivity of suffering

there's something profoundly wrong with how we determine what constitutes suffering and what doesn't. pain somehow turned into a show. if you want it noticed, it must be loud. if you want it heard, it must be huge. bleeding. unavoidable. you fall apart spectacularly, or you're "being dramatic." there's no space for quiet mourning, for muted sadness, for slow, mundane ache.

we've created a hierarchy of pain; some losses take center stage, some get shown the back door. sorrow for a lost parent? okay. sorrow for a lost friend? cringeworthy. burnout from working too hard? you should be thanking you're lucky to have chances. heartbreak without betrayal or scandal involved? that's life, move on.

who made this call? who gets to make the distinction between "real" pain and overreaction? between what needs comfort and what needs silence?

the reality is, suffering is utterly subjective. two individuals can experience the same situation and shatter in utterly different places. there is no one-size-fits-all measure of pain. it does not require context. it simply comes dressed in whatever form it wills and lingers as long as it pleases.

but the world does not always accommodate that complexity. we are instead compelled to justify our hurt, to compare it with someone else's. we run lines through our brains before we say them out loud, just so we can sound believable. just so we can make sure we're entitled to be hurt. and when that fails, we attempt to prove our hurt and make it poetic, tangible and/or tragic enough to believe.

it’s exhausting. and it’s unfair.

because pain doesn’t have to be spectacular to be real. it doesn’t have to be performative to deserve compassion. sometimes suffering looks like getting out of bed and still feeling empty. sometimes it’s a breakup that no one else thought was serious. sometimes it’s just the quiet hum of being overwhelmed by things that don’t make headlines.

we need to get out of this habit of treating pain like a competition. stop behaving as if only certain types of pain are deserving of attention. you don't need permission to feel broken. you don't need applause to weep.

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