Pain and Hate as a Transformative agent: Post Traumatic Growth

In the lottery of life, I was blessed to be born with loving parents and enjoyed a relatively comfortable life. As far as I can remember, my childhood is a mixture of discipline but with it accompanies the perks of eating what I want, and getting what I want. Born as an only child, I was the focus of my parents, with no siblings to share attention and belongings, I grew up kind of spoiled, some sort of a brat. It was just some sort of, since my mother trained and exposed me to different things in life. With that, it came to light that life is not just a bed comprised of beautiful roses but you also have to be aware and occasionally be pricked by the thorns. 

As a kid, I view life as something that I need to explore, discover, and learn about. Intuitively, I also saw the world, with a dark and mistrusting eyes. Maybe it was the advise of my mom at an early age, that I need to navigate the world with caution and not everyone has good intentions. She also repeated that nobody can help you best but yourself. Those precious wisdom were not tested until the fateful day came. On the 18th of July, when I was nine, my mother died, and it was no ordinary death, she was murdered. I was in a state of shock and all of a sudden, the agonizing pain of loss coupled with anxiety of what will happen now and in the future dominated my thoughts. A glimpse of a dark future flashed moment by moment and this keeps the pain and anxiety reverberating but deep inside I knew that death is irreversible and the only way to cope is to be strong. 

It was almost 3 years post mother's death  that I'm still subconsciously grieving, the wound brought by death was once again opened when I was informed by a close friend of my Mom that my father remarried. Having known that, I felt cheated, manipulated, and left without a choice for not being informed, for not being able to participate in life's crucial juncture. Nevertheless, I compromised and accepted but it paved way for a personal transformation. It was the moment that I reached the point of not depending on others to feel secure, I started to become selfish, and seeing life as darker as it seems. The advise that my mother gave years back that "Nobody can help you best but yourself" starts to crystallize, it is taking root down unto to the deepest level of my psyche. 

As of this moment, my estranged relationship with my father and the loss of my mother awakened a potent ambition, self-reliance, objectivity but admittedly, it also made me emotionally detached, calculating, shrewd, and somewhat ruthless. However, in those years of pain and oblivion, I learned the value of knowledge, opened my eyes to possibilities, learned the true meaning of mercy, the true value of justice and generosity, and gave me an insight of the possible workings of the human mind and soul. Most importantly, my view of death changed. It is not something to be feared of, but something to be embraced and yearned. It is with death that every new life springs, it is with death that transformation is possible. Death is indeed the freer of the soul and the greatest equalizer.

Pain and hate are things that the world harshly condemns but when looked  renders an opportunity for growth. The fire of pain and hate continuously burns the impurities of the soul that transforms a person into a character of which  can transcend the limits of the physical world.