Pain

What do we think about in life, if not pain? Physical pain, mental pain, emotional pain...it all drives us forward through life and tumbles throughout our thoughts. We all feel it, we know it, we suffer it. But somehow, even as we try to avoid it, we wind up seeking it. I've gone back and forth in the past year with thinking myself an emotional masochist or not. And I'm still not sure on that point.

Pain, that carries a certain amount of fascination with it. It's one of those things we try to understand but never end up really completely coming to terms with. Is it better to feel pain or to feel nothing at all? That's a question we consistently strive to answer in our lives (and yes, that question was a reference to a song). Pain is tempting, it is enthralling, it perpetually keeps us wondering. And it's what drives us.

We drag ourselves into hell and out. Every single time, we hope to avoid pain, or to drown it out, but at the same time, do we secretly hope to find more? Why do we do it? Why do we carry ourselves through it? Why torture ourselves? What's in it? I don't know. And sometimes, I wish I did.

I fall too easily. I let myself collapse and get hurt. Do I let myself or can I not avoid it? Is it because I want to feel the pain? Is it only because I want to feel at all? I don't know. But it leaves me precisely where I am--right here, right now. And I can't change that. I don't even know if I would want to though. Somehow, pain has become so mixed up in the rest of life that I don't know if I ask for it or just deal with it anymore. It just seems to prevail, sometimes entirely covering over everything else.