I Am Well Acquainted With Pain
How can I maintain with that s***on my brain?
I am well acquainted with pain.
As I sit writing this a ball of molten pain sits in the middle of my left arm sandwiched between my bicep and triceps. Another band of pain wraps around the same arm just below my elbow. Yet another ball of pain sits inside my left scapula. None of that pain is from injuries to those body parts, but instead just an inflamed nerve being agitated by bone spurs in my neck.
For twenty-seven years I have felt the ache of grief. A twin losing their other half is a grief that cannot be understood by anyone who is not a twin. It is a pain that surges and recedes but is never gone. Always the pain is there, only changing in intensity.
For my entire conscious life I have maintained a state of mental hypervigilance. A childhood under the tyranny of a father who would beat, mentally torment, and stab through the boundaries that makes one feel whole and safe taught me to always be on guard. Even the most innocuous of scenarios makes my psychological scars glow hot with pain, leaving me achingly in a tense crouch of defense against all possible harms at all times.
My constant lifelong interactions with suffering generated the question constantly in my mind.
Why?
Why are pain and suffering allowed to exist, but to endure?
Why must pain be present at birth, likely present at death, and sown so intricately into the experience of life?
Why do people who suffer pain inflict pain on other people? Why do those who have suffered not fight to reduce the suffering of others, even for a moment?
If pain and suffering are so much a part of existing, then why do we exist at all?
What is the point of it all?
I wish this introduction was the start of a towering polemic explaining that I had the answers to these questions. But I don’t. And I likely never will.
From the best I can tell, there is no answer to them. There is no “why” to pain and suffering. There is no purpose to exist.
Here many will point to their chosen faith or creed to say there lie the answers. And it’s true. There are answers in the myriad religions and beliefs found across the time and space of human sapience. A cornucopia overflowing with infinite answers to these questions.
But if a question has seemingly infinite answers, does it have an answer at all? No.
There is no “why” to anything. There is no point to existence.
But there is something wonderful about searching for something and finding nothing in its place. In the gap, there is room for creation.
Humans, whether through quirk of evolution, divine gifting, or some explanation in between, possess a talent for recognizing patterns, and creating them.
Where we find no meaning, no answer to why, no purpose, we can create them.
“All I know is pain, all I feel is rain
How can I maintain with that shit on my brain?” – Earl Simmons
How can I maintain? By creating my purpose where there is none.
I am well acquainted with pain. I don’t know why. But I know it has no purpose, unless I make one for it.
I choose to limit others’ pain, in any way I have agency to do so.
What is your pain? What is your purpose?
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