Pain

There are a few basic elements that connect every person on the planet. Emotions like love, hate, fear, depression, and joy are feelings every human will experience during their lives to varying degrees. A writer wouldn’t be able to create an effective love story if his or her audience had no concept of what love was. True physical pain is unlike any of the other conditions I have previously mentioned, even though every human can feel it.

My motivation for writing this sprung from an unfortunate incident that happened to me while on vacation in the UK. All was going exceptionally well until two days before we were scheduled to leave for home. I was coming down from the top floor of our two-story rental cottage when I missed a step and crashed down half a flight of stairs. As my back hit one stair, I heard a loud crack. I hoped the noise came from the step, but the searing pain in my lower back told me the stair survived the fall just fine.

My journey down the staircase ended with me sprawled on the kitchen floor, tendrils of pain radiating up from my waist into most of my upper body. My wife, Linda, was both stunned by the fall and unable to offer any help since I outweighed her by around seventy pounds. It took several minutes for the pain to subside enough for me, using a kitchen chair Linda brought over, to drag my battered body into a standing position.

Nothing has been the same since the accident. I normally enjoy flying, but the trip from Heathrow to Fort Myers via Boston was agony. Now life revolves around sleeping in a recliner with a heating pad instead of my wife and doctor visits. The pain has been modified but persists. I understand there may be a back brace and some shots in my future, possibly an operation. None of it is enticing.

So why have I wasted your time telling you my tale of woe, assuming you’re still reading, that is? I think that as writers, there is an important lesson to be learned besides watching where you’re going. I have been fortunate enough to live my life free of any major injury. No broken bones or cuts requiring stitches, no major surgeries except to repair a torn rotator cuff, nothing! When I read a story where the protagonist is in pain, I understand the concept, but until now, I have had nothing to relate to. How many of you are in the same position?

While reading a war story or thriller, I find the author may go through extensive detail trying to show how much pain the main character is in after having a chunk of his shoulder blown away by a bullet. No matter how descriptive the author is, if the reader has never been shot, they will never know what it feels like. Literary critics are always on about showing, not telling, but for pain, all the writer can do is to tell about it. Without firsthand experience, a person can never truly know what it’s like to break a leg or fall down a flight of stairs.

Another unique characteristic of pain is it dissolves rather quickly from people’s memory. You may remember the time when your finger got slammed in a car door, but can you still feel the pain? The brain recalls the incident, but the excruciating pain is no longer there. I’ve watched women in a maternity ward suffer agonizing pain as their body prepares to give birth, but all will be forgotten shortly after the child is born.

I hope my article on pain hasn’t been too painful for you to read through. My purpose for writing this is simple: pain deserves a place of its own. If you haven’t experienced it, you can’t know it, and if you have, your brain will erase it in short order. Thank you for reading!