Indescribable

When someone says the word “pain,” you always think physical pain right? A paper cut on your finger that stings like crazy when you find it with hand sanitizer or lime juice. Or maybe when your pinky toe finds the coffee table in the wee hours of the night… Or the pain from just sleeping wrong, you wake up grumpy and grouchy, neck hurts. But you can describe it right? You feel it, eventually you walk it off, or pop a painkiller and carry on. Physical pain is easier to deal with than what many think, yeah there’s extreme pain, no one wants to have to go through... like EVER. There’s at least usually a reason behind it, and maybe a solution in most cases.

Pain isn’t just physical.

It’s mental. There’s the mental pain felt by a student being pressured to be the best of the best... when really all they want from time to time… is to binge watch the new Netflix show everyone’s been talking about, or spend time reading or playing video games. There’s the mental pain when a teenager is struggling to fight their demons inside their head, fighting their anxiety, fighting their depression… with only their own mind. In some way you can describe that pain felt by pressure or mental illness, or society or whatever. In some ways you can say “My mind is so overwhelmed it hurts. I need a break, I need rest…”

But... pain is more than a physical ache or a mental strain… it's emotional. And emotional pain is what hurts the most. The emotional pain of losing a loved one, of losing a beloved pet… pain we all eventually experience. While yes, loss is a great pain… for me the greatest pain, is emotional pain, and that which we cannot describe. No amount of words will suffice when the dictionary has given up, and a thesaurus has exhausted itself. It’s the indescribable pain of feeling so utterly helpless, when everything seems to be falling apart. Of when your mind won’t stop wondering why that person left you... After treating you like you were the one for so long… or after they betrayed your trust and loyalty. The indescribable pain of feeling the love that once was a blaze fire slowly die, leaving nothing but a smoking husk of what once was. The indescribable feeling of feeling alone in a world of millions, searching and searching for a single soul to pour your heart out to, to find a release of that indescribable emotional pain. But even then, how? How can you put into words the pain that has been eating away at you, all the way to your core, making you cry to the point where that emotional pain become physical. As your eyes become red and puffy, your stomach begins to cramp and ache from the sheer amount of tears shed as you attempt to catch a breath. The pain of clenching your fists so hard they turn white and clammy from you trying to hold onto what you wanted most, even though it has already slipped away.

I have spent many agonizing nights in pain. In mental pain from trying to figure out why I couldn’t have done better, why I couldn’t let go of what’s gone, why I wasn’t the right one, why I feel like I fail at everything I do. Combing, and nitpicking, and breaking down every conversation, every action, every text, every little detail till my mind gave up trying. In emotional pain from giving my heart out to those who never deserved it in the first place... they just pretended to care. From spending countless hours planning and prepping the perfect gift, the perfect night, the perfect thing for them only to have it mean nothing in the end. Staying up late just to talk to them after a long day, or waking up earlier than I desired just to send them off for the day… and then be ignored the rest of the time. Making sure I tiptoed around certain subjects just to not upset them, and still upsetting them for not talking enough… or even talking too much, giving too much, caring too much. It was always too much. Too much of me. And that turned into pain, emotional pain that became indescribable.

Always wondering why, always wishing it would change, always hoping maybe one day… this indescribable pain might end… but knowing… that unless it somehow manifested into physical pain… it will continue to hide in the shadows, and torture the poor soul.