This year my world was shaken when someone I trusted completely turned on me very suddenly and extremely viciously. I had never imagined having to deal with a situation like the one I found myself in. I felt like I was drowning in the unfathomable depth of hurt that came from feeling as if a person I loved had died one night and been replaced by an imposter. Or alternately, that an alien race was body-snatching humans in a bid for peaceful world-domination as portrayed in Stephenie Meyer’s book “The Host” (which I highly recommend by the way…). For the record, the aliens in the book were much nicer than whatever was inhabiting the body of my ex-friend during that terrible encounter.
How I felt (image source)
I tried to fix something that I now realise must have been broken from the start, because a friend who can become a stranger in a matter of minutes is someone you never really knew in the first place.
Anxiety, sadness and fear followed. The last time I was that afraid of someone was when I was in high school and had the maths teacher from Hell. No, literally from Hell… when she left the classroom we said (very quietly) that she was on her way there to fetch her next assignment. I prayed, I leaned on and talked endlessly to friends and family to the point that I was sick of hearing my own voice, and I used all the ninja-level anxiety crushing tactics in my arsenal. I tried to find peace, but there was chaos inside my head. Thoughts were like rabid hamsters on acid and I just couldn’t seem to get them under control. That is… until I put everything that was upsetting me in a box.
We are taught that to properly deal with hurt, we have to work through it. We are taught to dissect it, to poke it and prod it, to scour it clean and expose it in all its rawness until it scabs over and heals. This might be true in some cases, but there are many situations where this approach steals the joy we could be experiencing while we focus all our energy on our hurt.
When I put my hurt in a box, I had to stuff it in. The box looked like my bag when I pack for a weekend away, not merely bursting at the seams as it is after a sensible audit (Including questions like “Do I really need to pack multiple outfits per day for temperatures ranging from “suitable for the arctic circle” to “suitable for the seventh circle of hell”), but threatening to explode. I put the box in a corner of my now quiet and blissfully hamster-free mind and filled the space with calmer, brighter things such as gratitude for everyone and everything I had in my life and joy in the moments I had been taking for granted.
A strange thing happened over time – I snuck peeks at the box every now and then, and it reminded me of a balloon slowly deflating. I went over to it a few times after that and snuck a glance inside. Every time I looked in, the hurt that had once filled the space had shrunk a little. It was like watching bread dough rise, but in reverse. What had once filled every square centimetre of the box and threatened to make a break for it, now sits timidly in a corner. It is still there, but I know that sometime in the future when I look inside the box, the hurt will be completely gone.
Another funny thing happened each time I looked inside the box. At the same time that the hurt was shrinking, there would be beautifully wrapped presents waiting for me to discover. Each time I opened one of the presents, I found to my delight, a lesson, a blessing or a strength.
So remember that there are times when the best place for your hurt is in a box. When you put it there you can find joy in the present, find comfort in the people who love you and find peace in the act of letting go and letting be. You will find that if you open your mind, you will learn valuable lessons about life, find blessings in disguise and discover strengths you never imagined you had. And if you open your heart, you will find that despite the hurt, you will be able to trust again.
Portal to Change 
Awesome article … Love your humour. Stay strong you are a bigger and better person and a real true friend
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