Good Damage to Growing Pains

I have to!

 Why?

Because if I don't, that means that all the damage I got isn't good damage, it's just damage.

I have gotten nothing out of it, and all those years I was miserable was for nothing.

I could have been happy this whole time and written books about girl detectives and been cheerful and popular and had good parents, is that what you're saying?

What was it all for?

-Bojack Horseman, Season 6, Episode 10

I think this is a sentiment that most people can relate to. The need to turn terrible situations into something beautiful; to grow flowers from a bed of manure. It’s the idea of Kintsugi, the Japanese practice of repairing broken ceramics with gold to create a new and more valuable piece. It is a comforting idea that our damage can make us more valuable, it gives us something to aspire to when we are in the midst of dark trauma. But I believe there is a point where this ideology becomes toxic martyrdom. A point where we no longer add gold to make us stronger and more whole, but simply to please those around us, to make our damage more appealing. Or maybe we feel that our damage makes us less worthy, we internalise the message of our abusers that we are less than human and if we cover the cracks and the dirt with gold and flowers no one will realise what we are. No one else will need to feel our damage. I am definitely guilty of taking on this mindset, of needing to hide the hurting and tortured parts of myself behind smiles, art, and adventures. Although I still slip into this mindset every once in a while, I had a great internal shift as I worked on the Growing Pains series.

When I started the Growing Pains series I was really going through it: I had just ended my engagement, I lost most of my friends during that break up, and I was living an ocean and a continent away from home. And even though I craved the comfort and security of home and family, I still had demons to face back across that ocean. I felt lost, tired, and broken. I was done with this shit, even if flowers were going to grow out of it, I was done. So I did the only thing that I can do when nothing else in my life is working out, I made art. While I was making Growing Pains Pt. 1, I started thinking a lot about how I relate to my trauma. I thought about how I always felt like I had to turn my trauma into something. Something useful, beautiful, productive. I felt like if I didn’t do this then there was no point to what I was going through, I was just damaged. And I began to realize how fucked up that was. I had never asked for this damage, I didn’t want it at all, so why was it my job to make it beautiful? Why did I have to make it palatable and consumable for the world? And what would happen if I didn’t? That was when my mindset started to shift. I started thinking about every bad thing that had happened to me not as trauma, but as growing pains. We all have to go through shitty things in life, but that’s a part of being alive. I am made up of many parts, damage included, but that damage doesn’t have to be good or bad, it can just exist as a part of life. It is growing pains. Something necessary to become who I am. But it’s important to remember that the easier parts of you can yield beautiful things too. Yes, flowers grow from shit, but they also grow from sunlight, water, and warmth. You are your trauma, but your trauma is not all you are. No one likes growing pains, yet they are a necessary part of life. They don’t need to be good or bad, they can just exist.