First of all, I'm writing this from my phone, so bear with any grammatical or spelling errors. This has been welling up, and when the urge to write strikes, you just write.
Pain is a beast. It settles around you like thick dust, choking your air supply and making everything around you dim and hazy. You can push and fight your way through it all day, but it just gets thicker, blocking out the sunlight and closing you off.
It weighs thousands of pounds, more than any human can bear, but it isn't a solid mass. It's thousands of small pieces that you have to pick up one by one. They become heavier and heavier, but you don't dare set one piece down for fear of starting over.
Pain is a ghost. Its presence is sometimes visible to only you, and it cripples you with a threat that no one else can see.
Pain is a healing scar. It isn't a gaping wound, but it will nag at you with a lingering hurt that you just can't shake, even after you've bandaged the wound.
Pain is a whisper, coming to you at the most inconvenient times, after the rush of life has settled down for the day and you finally relax a little. It breathes in your ear the reminders of itself, that it hasn't gone; it's just waiting beneath the surface.
Pain is a wave, when you're out to sea and a storm is coming. You find your way to a lifeboat, and just pull yourself onto it, when you can sense the tug of the water, the pull of the sea, as the wave doubles, triples in size, before it pounces on you like a starving water beast.
Pain is a void.
It's nothing and everything all at once. It's the first spark of the fire that consumes the forest. It's the first drop of rain that signals a hurricane is coming soon.
My stepdad has cancer, and there is nothing I can do about it. So I will lean into the pain. I'll let the dust settle around me. I'll stop and listen to the whisper. I'll let the wound throb. I'll set some of the thousands of pieces down. I'll let the waves wash over me, because I'll be alright. We'll all be alright, because we're doing life together.
Pain is nothing, compared to love.
