Meditation and Suffering

My friend sent me this email:

I'm really not sure how those difficult people in my life are helping me to heal. It's not very helpful trying to make sense of it. All I can do now is observe my internal response to those people and how my body feels when I interact with them. I try to avoid talking to them sometimes, as I really don't want any conflicts or dramas. But I guess even when I do avoid them, there is still conflict in me. 

I responded:

I agree, making sense of suffering is not helpful.  I don't have a solution, but your awareness of what is happening in you is what heals.  I am going through hard emotional times too.  I doubt that there is an ultimate solution.  Suffering is human.  But meditation is all about awareness.  We don't suffer less because we meditate.  In fact, I suffer more when I am aware of what is going with me (I am not necessarily aware of what is going on with other people from meditating).  We can only say, this is how I feel.  Can't even say it because it is a feeling not words that we feel.  But I personally find that some things that used to bother me a lot die down.  It is as if I am aware of them, they bother me more and slowly as I become more aware of them in my everyday life, somehow I adjust to that particular form of suffering.