Pain

This morning started out negatively-cramps so excruciating I was praying for death.  I try to avoid pills and medication, but the bottle if Tylenol 3 on the dresser stood there, offering relief from my monthly decent into hell.

I declined,  I would stick this one out, breathe the pain away.  And as if to show how foolish I was being, pain seized my body and I began to shake uncontrollably.  I shook so hard I slid out of bed, knocking my head on the dresser on the way down.  I couldn't move, I couldn't scream, all I could do was sit slumped against the dresser and give in to the pain.

Give in? That didn't seem right, but it did.  I was fighting the pain and as a result I was more aware than not that the pain was there.  It became my every focus, it filled the spaces that once weren't in pain.  It multiplied its intensity until it threatened to consume me, left me pleading for death, but scared of death at the same time.

So I did something different.  I sat with the pain.  I turned on my vaporiser and I let myself experience its depth.  As it washed over me, the sensation changed.  I was in pain, but I was the creator of this pain.  I had been fighting it like it was an outsider.

I learned a lesson in the quiet hours of the morning, the pain I feel from life comes from me, not elsewhere.