I've had fairly severe back pain for the last few days. My back hurts most of the time, but lately it really hurts, and it is literally maddening.
Like, I realize that there's nothing I can say that will help you bridge the empathy divide between us. I realize that, as Elaine Scarry wrote, "To have great pain is to have certainty. To hear that another person has pain is to have doubt."
But holy shit when you are really hurting, it is hard to really be anything else. The pain consumes both body and self. The answer to how are you is in pain, and the answer to what do you want to do today is have less pain, and the answer to what are your plans for the weekend is to lie supine in a vain attempt to relieve the pain.
Relief, which is a lovely word, becomes more and more the only thing I want. I don't want to be successful or win the lottery or have a million people read my new book; I only want relief. I want to be returned to the state that the rest of the world appears to be in, a world where you can care about this and about that instead of being forced only to care about the pain.
This is the part of the post where I say, "But at least I am learning lots of important lessons from the pain" or whatever, but no. I am learning nothing from it. It is so boring and monotonous and loud and all-encompassing. I give back pain one star.
