Pain cannot go away. It does not simply cease. Pain is the acknowledgement of something missing in our life. Something gone, perhaps forever, that we yearn to have in our lives. Sometimes we know that pain by name, that loss by its whispered word, that hoped for yearning by its perfect fantasy. Sometimes we know that pain through opposites.
There is pain in dehumanization, loss, despair, and so many other things. At times we may feel like a cog in the universe's machine. That should we die we would be easily replaced. We have nothing unique to offer. Our words are empty and meaningless. Our actions are fruitless and empty. There is pain in saying goodbye to those we have loved, sought for, or even have hated. For we are complex creatures and therefore our interactions with each other are complex.
Pain. Being told you are nothing. Told you are subhuman to all those around you. Told to say not what you are. Who you are. Why you are. Silence forever lest the very fires of the Devil consume you body and soul. Silence. Speak not for we dare not seek after your nameless evil. The profanity of knowing you would castrate our righteousness. Our perfection would became tainted by you. You, pathetic thing, are beyond redemption. You, we have declared, cannot accept God's mercy. For it is you He hates most. You, by the mark of your skin, by the mark of your sexuality, by the mark of your false gender, by the mark of your true gender roles, by the mark of your position in society, by the mark of everything or anything that is not "us" has made you beyond the great and infinite power of our Creator.
God, say we, will rescue the sinner. He will visit the sick and the afflicted. Behold he has healed the blind. But he cannot heal you. No, he cannot and will not heal you. For you are not us. You are not what we declare as the correct sin to commit. The sin of race. The sin of gender. The sin of sexuality. All are abhorrent before Him. Sin with lies. Sin with pride. Sin with greed. Gluttony. Idiocy. Sin with all those things and God will forgive. But nothing more.
Pain. Pain is not being what God wanted you to be. Pain is not being what society wanted you to be. It's not being what your religion or family wanted you to be. It is loss. It is emptiness. It is standing on the very edge of the abyss, of staring into the darkness and knowing that is where you must tread. Take a moment, while in pain, and look behind you. If you stay in that small circle of light, you will know comfort. You will know familiarity. But you will never know what is beyond that circle.
Pain will ease in time. It will ease and subside from heartache to heartache from loss to loss and from farewell to farewell. What you see before you now cannot remain. It shouldn't remain. Life is pain. It is the key to at last allowing peace to wash over you. It is the understanding that allows a sense of joy and hope to come over you.
But, and this I think is true, know this. Know that true joy, that sense of happiness that transcends the moment, does not come and cannot come until we acknowledge and permit the pain in our lives to seep into the core of us. Only then can we let go of the illusion that pain should be avoided and should be ignored. Only then can our lives heal from the wounds that are inflicted upon us as well as self-inflicted.
Let tomorrow rise with the brightness of a new day. Let it cast the shadows from us and throw the darkness back. Let the light make all that weighs us down subside into the earth. But do not let it scorch the darkness within. The heaviness within. The sorrow within. Let it cast light upon it. Let us embrace all that we are. Dark and light. Sorrow and joy.
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