Pain. That’s probably one of the most dreaded words on the planet. Pain. The sound of it makes me cringe. It’s emotional. It’s physical. It can numb you from head to toe and take away your ability to think or act rationally. Pain – that’s the word. But what is it really?

The doctors often say, “Rate the pain you’re feeling from 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest.” I have never said 10. Because I know nothing I will ever feel is 10. There’s always something worse right around the corner. It’s like education. The older you get, the worse it becomes. But you also understand that everything in the past was just a preparation for the present. And the present is preparing you for the future.

Because pain is evergrowing.

Like the moment you watch your perfect family crumble and fall. Your world stops and you think the worst has happened, only to realize that it is a permanent fall and can never be rebuilt.

Like feeling hope for the first time in years when someone promises not to walk away and watching that hope crash as you sit on your bed, clutching your phone and sobbing silently.

Like giving up on a dream. Giving up on your five year plan for no fault of yours.

Like heartbreak. You think you’ve figured it out after the first time. You understand what it is. You can handle it. And then the second one happens and it’s ten times more than what you could have ever imagined.

Like the very second after you’ve said “I love you” for the first time and the person on the other end pauses. Your hope sinks with every tick on the clock and yet you feel so unprepared for the “Hmm” that you think you heard in a hallucination but was reality.

Like that little eight year old girl sitting on a couch while her aunt called her “a brave kid” and she grinned – a fake grin – to cover up the stab she felt deep inside her. The need to be anywhere but there. To wake up from the nightmare. To have someone tell her that this is not her life, this is not her childhood.

Pain. When you’re four, you think the scratch on your feet is horrible. Then you get bruised and it leaves a scar. Eventually it becomes ligament tears. And then broken bones. One fine day, you’re struggling to get out of bed because every part of your body hurts. Everything feels painful. But it doesn’t mean the world is over. You don’t give up on school because your classes got harder. Like you don’t stop living because the pain got worse. You go on. You learn to put one foot in front of the other and walk it off.

Because sometimes, pain is good.

Pain lets you appreciate happiness. It teaches you the value of those small moments in life. It helps you learn the concept of empathy. It brings people with similar battles together. It gives you wisdom. It makes you stronger. And when looked at right – Pain gives purpose to life. Maybe pain was created, not to sink us, but to let us help others who are going through the same thing. Maybe pain was meant to irk a positivity that I have failed to see for a very long time now. It’s the only thing you can do about pain without creating a more traumatic experience for the people who love you. Maybe that’s why the word exists to explain that emotion.

Maybe PAIN is just an abbreviation of – Positive. Attitude. Is. Necessary.

Maybe that’s why, like positivity, pain cannot be killed. Pain cannot be willed away. Pain cannot be destroyed. Pain cannot be ignored.

“Pain Demands To Be Felt”

– John Green

Inspired by the comment by Ceolittle :

“I was feeling down today kinda lost what the real meaning of life is all about through all the pain”