...growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something.
Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind - graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.
And if you're very very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last - and yet will remain with you for life.
Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.
Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: it teaches you, tells you that you are alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes, it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it to one degree or another.
Thank you, Jim Butcher.
Now, please understand that I try to be as philosophical about all of this as I can. I'm sure you have all heard, "That which does not kill me..." and sometimes I can manage to appreciate the lessons chronic pain teaches. It teaches empathy and forbearance. It teaches you to hear yourself as you complain to those around you. It teaches you that sometimes people can't "shrug off" the pain of empathy to stand beside you and help you with this burden - it teaches you that sometimes the pain of empathy is so strong in those you love that they simply cannot help you one more time. It teaches understanding of self and others. I have learned much in my years of constant pain.
However, I still weep and rail at the universe and my own body for this burden. I know these lessons and I accept that I need to learn them well, but sometimes that child in me cries out, "it's not fair!" before I can get a grip on it all and breathe again.
I just wanted anyone who reads this to try to remember that all humans have pain. It's part of the condition. It's not wrong to lean on people and it's not unusual to rant and rave. But sometimes, if you can focus on the lessons it teaches, your pain can at least be useful to you and not the senseless monster it can seem.
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