Struggle is a rickety old bus in a pitch black tunnel on a very bumpy pothole-covered road. You cannot see the end. When you ride the struggle bus, you will be jostled around mercilessly as the wheels press over whatever is in their way, or catch in the missing pieces of the path.
The seats are all missing and instead you have piles and masses and pools of black paint. Everywhere, on everything.
Their are two kinds of coping that people choose to survive the struggle bus:
Unhealthy coping. Unhealthy coping looks like taking the pain and adding in your own. You take what you have but now you can focus on the pain you control. You move with the stumbling and you jostle around and bump into things and bruise your hands beating the walls. You cover yourself in black paint. You bathe in pain.
And healthy coping. You reach around above you and your hand finds a strap, and your fingers wrap around the bottom of the loop, grasping tight to it in order to stay standing. You avoid the black paint as much as you can, and you cling to the strap. If the bus were to nearly fall on its side you’d hold tight and rather than fall to the side you’d hold on like it’s a branch on a cliff you’ve been shoved off of.
Healthy coping is a shield, hug, warm bed, and a friend. Your savior.
Unhealthy coping is taking the stabs of many swords at once and stabbing yourself on your own to replace the pain with one you think you control.
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