The Thing About Pain

 

The thing about pain is that we all feel it differently. We interpret it differently, we respond to it differently and we interact with it differently. Despite the established biological design and chemical makeup of our brains, they are as unique and different as our fingerprints.

The thing about pain is that when you’re in it long enough, you just get used to it. The uneasy feeling of being exhausted to the point you can feel your blood rushing through your brain and even your joints struggle to make your aching muscles do the simplest of tasks.You become so used to the way it feels, the all encompassing weight of discomfort that you struggle to remember a time when something on your body or in it, didn’t hurt. 

The thing about pain is that when you’re in the middle of it, you can question every life choice, every action, and even the inactions. It’s so hard to see the view when you’re stuck in the hole, and all you know to do is keep digging. 

The thing about pain is that sometimes we worry that it will never stop. We all do it, we challenge the muscle or joint off and on after an injury “just to see if it still hurts.” 

The thing about pain is that through the haze, we long for the times we took our health for granted. The mental game of bargaining for better times with wishes that sometimes go unfulfilled. 

The thing about pain is that for the most part it eventually does pass. Day in and day out, one foot in front of the other until one day we realize that our head doesn’t hurt as much, or you wake up and your ears aren’t plugged anymore, or lay down and find that feeling of blood rushing through your brain no longer makes you wince. Maybe you find that it’s easier to put your shoes on where before the muscles moved like they were dipped in molasses, slow to respond and sticky.

The thing about pain is that even after the trauma ends, the echo remains like aftershocks to the soul that rip and tear at your heart.

The thing about pain is that sometimes it doesn’t go away. Like throwing a rock into a lake, the waves it creates will eventually reach every inch of the shore, even the parts we can’t see with the naked eye. 

The thing about pain is that it isn’t always physical but maybe if it were, many of us wouldn’t walk this Earth with metaphorical gaping wounds leaving us raw, bloody and filled with grief. 

The thing about pain is that sometimes, we can heal. Which doesn’t mean that we forget the pain, we just get to a point where the wound is covered with a scar and then the scar eventually fads. 

But ultimately we are never the same.