My pain is real

My pain is real. My pain is deep. No one else knows my pain. I get no real benefit from telling you or anyone else how unbearable my pain has been and can be. Yet I sometimes do it anyway. It is almost a habit, though I have been learning to break it. It has a tendency to morph into its own little cell if I let it. I don’t find life in that cell. I don’t find life in comparing my pain with yours. I do find glimpses of life when you feel some essence of my pain, and care. And I hope that I help you, even if only a smidge, by somehow leaning into your pain for a minute. Or longer…

My pain causes me to sometimes lash out at others. My pain causes me to look past your pain sometimes. Please forgive me. I am learning. Pain is teaching me.

I received a call that informed me that my daughter was dying. For 100 days she deteriorated before my eyes and then breathed her last while I held her hand. I slept with my 26 year old daughter almost every night during that 100 days and she would occasionally reach over during the night and place her long slender fingers upon my back, the softest touch. I can feel it now. Her last coherent words “thrown together” before she slipped into a coma. She even somehow “called” for me to come into her room so she could tell me…I love you.

I know pain. I cannot imagine deeper pain. I lost the most beautiful thing I have ever known on this planet. I lost my life. I felt that I lost everything. I felt that I could not survive, live again. But I can. We all can, no matter how impossible it seems.

People see me today and most would not have a clue of the pain inside. Then something happens and a small tear slides out. Or my voice cracks. Or they ask me about my children. I know pain. I feel it as deeply, I believe, as anyone. But you have pain, too. I do not know your pain, but I am sorry. And I am sorry if you do not feel that truth from me.