We are a society of categories, a civilization of divisions and definitions and labels, but life isn’t always so easily constructed. Every person in human history has experienced it, the biting, the burning, the sting of pain; has been afraid, has been threatened, has been conscious of a possible or probable tragedy, disaster, or hurt. These are the things that keep us up at night, the things that follow us even when we’re alone, the things that keep us from feeling safe, feeling “normal,” or feeling at all. Somewhere between the first time that someone was hurt and today, we have decided that only extreme cases of pain should be addressed, and the rest is less important, they are personal, private. But what if we didn’t?

I want to tell you about the time that I fell off my bike, and nobody was there to help me up. About how lonely that felt, and how lonely I can still feel now. Or the first time I had to say goodbye, not knowing if there would be another “hello,” in the future. The things that made you want to tear every mirror from every wall, and every outside eye from the planes of your face. The things that made people laugh when you wanted them to feel. I want you to tell me about your bee stings and knee scrapes, the things that slapped you across the face, and those moments when you felt like your heart was too big for your chest.

We try so hard to hurry up and heal, to get back to “normal.” As though such a state exists. We look at each other’s lives thinking that they must hold the key to happiness. They are doing something I am not and are better for it. They don’t know what I am going through. This is almost always the opposite of true.

I want to tell you about my pain, because chances are the very same things have happened to you. I have learned in my years of living, that joy is fun to share, and of course, I want to hear you laugh, but the bad stuff, the scary stuff, the stuff that is the hardest to say out loud, is usually the most important. It’s usually the stuff that lets me know you’re just as alive as I am. And sometimes, I feel like I am the only one.

Stephen King said “The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away.” But imagine for one second that the world is not your enemy. Imagine for just a moment, that the whole world might, at some time or another, feel the exact same way.

Suffering is an inescapable part of all of our lives – we only think otherwise because we are so afraid to tell each other about it. We believe that we are human in spite of our pain and our failures, our losses and limitations.

But what if we are wrong? What if these are the very things that make us so wonderfully and excruciatingly human in the first place?

What if I told you, you were made to feel?