Two Kinds of Pain Revisited

There are those who live on pain. They nurture and care for it, building a tiny garden of thorns that they tend, occasionally pricking themselves because without their pain they no longer know how to feel. They are everywhere. They live among us in places and in bodies that look like our own, but with minds that know no joy. The sun that shines is cold and unforgiving, the sky in their world is dark and forbidding.

Fear and uncertainty have become their most reliable companions. Trust is an infrequent visitor, a commodity that has become far too expensive to be purchased. And the biggest challenge of all is that it is the keystone of their arch of pain. Without it they lack the ability to pull themselves out of the warrens of darkness they have constructed, so they run.

Many people run from pain there is nothing uncommon about it. We often run from our fears. Like children who are afraid of the dark we flee the battlefield in search of a less frightening confrontation. But it can only go on for so long.

There is a limited time in which a person can run before they must turn around and decide to stand or fall. One can only avoid making that choice for so long before you lose the ability to make the choice.

The problem with pain is that there is only so much that people can take before they just crack. We all have our breaking points. Not unlike a dam, fissures develop and the pressure builds until we just lose it.

And some are stronger than others. Some can withstand incredible amounts of pain. They take whatever life dishes out and roll with the punches. They are kicked, beaten and pummeled, but they keep moving. It doesn’t really matter what happens because they have figured out how to cope, or so it seems.

They bleed so that they may feel human, so that they can feel alive. The problem was that this described Georgie perfectly, he was an emotional vampire who thrived on draining me and everyone else he encountered of our happiness. He instinctively knew that the only way that he could keep me around was to feed my fears and insecurities and so he did.

He fueled the fire and helped me resolve to forget her, to ignore the past and pretend that it help no meaning, no significance to me. By trashing the past I was proving my strength and creating a brighter future. I was in so much pain and so hurt that like a moth flies into the flame I kept listening to the poison he spewed. I was so very young and so very incapable of admitting that I was wrong.I had three things working against me. I was young, male and stupid. It was easier to pretend that I was whole than to admit that a gaping wound had torn my soul out of me.

In time the pain began to take on a familiar look to me. I woke up expecting to be cloaked in its embrace. As the empty feeling gradually took over I stopped remembering what it was like to be happy and turned inward. Had I been smarter I would have recognized that I was classically depressed and done something to try and work through it.

When you are dead inside the world is a place that lacks colors. There is little to no distinction between night and day. Without a way to distinguish between dark and light the days run into each other, a blur of activity, or in my case inactivity. At least I think that there wasn't much, I can't really say because I just don't remember anymore.

Truth be told I don't want to remember. Those were dark days that are best left wherever my mind stashed them. I sometimes think that if only I could truly forget them I might be happier and that the scars might heal faster, but maybe that is nothing more than a search for fools' gold.