Unhappiness in a Bottle

The beginning is always the hardest part of anything to write, for me anyway. I always have trouble getting where I’m going, but I always know where I want to end up, so I’m gonna start there. I’m sick and tired of being unhappy. I want to reach that place where everything is going to be okay again. I thought I was there. I thought that I was finally on track, but I’m so far away that I can’t even see the train heading straight for me. I don’t know if I’m crazy, or just horrendously unlucky. I keep getting dealt the hard hand, or maybe I redeal until I get it, I’m not sure. Maybe I want to end up here. In this place where things aren’t okay anymore. Sometimes I really wonder. It’s a draw, I guess. I can either be in this place, willing and able to write every care, fear, and sadness that I can convey, or I can be on the other side of the spectrum. I can be happy, or so close that it doesn’t matter if I’m really there, and I miss my ability to convey how I feel. When I’m in this place I can get it all down on paper, one way or another, but when I’m not it’s just there, and no matter how long I try I can’t show the world how it feels. Because happiness is not something you can write about. You can’t write about being content, whole, in love. Because there aren’t words for that. There are similes, but none quite compare. None will ever come close. So ya, maybe I like the darkness. Maybe I stray to it every time my life starts to get boring. Maybe that’s my disease. What’s my cure?
Some say love can cure you of anything. I was one of those people. I thought that love could move mountains. I was wrong. There are boundaries in even love. There are limits, things that just cannot happen. And that realization really hurt. It hurt knowing that even if you are drowning in love, sometimes it can’t save you. I’m not sure how to even explain what’s going through my head right now. I’m thinking about this too much, that’s what he’d say. He’d say that things will eventually be okay if I just give him his space and his time. What he doesn’t know is that my entire world has been tipped upside down and turned inside out. I don’t know how to function in this backwards place. I don’t know how to be in love anymore, because the way I thought love is isn’t in any way close to the way it really is.
I thought love would save me. I thought that once I fell in love all those holes and all those pains would eventually go away. I thought I’d be whole again with the man of my dreams by my side, but suddenly I’m not enough. He needs his time to enjoy himself away from me, to grow away from me. But what happens when we grow up separately for so long, will we eventually turn into people that aren’t in love anymore? Will we one day look into the other’s eyes and not see the fire, or spark that was there for so long before? I’m just afraid that he’s gonna grow up one day and realize how great he is. He’s gonna realize that he’s an amazing guy, and he’s gonna see that I’m not such an amazing girl. I’m really fucked up. We both know that. And maybe after revealing my whole fucked up self by taking him to the graveyard to meet my dad, he sees that the hole is too deep. He can’t fill it, so he doesn’t want to try anymore.
That’s ridiculous probably. Ridiculous to think that I scared him away after all the times we’ve talked about my father and all the ways that it’s influenced my life. But I wanted him to meet him. That sounds crazy, but I needed to take him there. I needed him to see the final remnants of the man that took the happiness out of my eyes when he left this world. I needed him to see the physical proof of why and how much I was fucked up all those years ago. And I think I scared him a little. He wasn’t ready to be that kind of strong for me. Holding me at night when I have nightmares is one thing, but holding me as I’m sobbing next to my father’s grave is another. I think I thought too much of our relationship.
I wanted it to be perfect, complete, and all-consuming. Because that’s what he is to me. He’s my rock, my best friend, my boyfriend, my true love, my… everything. He’s the one I go to when I’m feeling frustrated, annoyed, alone, hurt, stressed, or even inexplicably happy. He is enough for me. He makes me comfortable. For the first time I can be myself. I can say every stupid blonde thing in front of him and not feel stupid for one second. I can bumble around and get confused when we’re having sex, I can laugh too. I can write in front of him and let him read it. I can do ANYTHING and everything in his presence, I’m that comfortable, but he’s not. And that hurts no matter how normal it is. Why am I suddenly not enough, or really… too much?
I’m thinking about this too much, but lately I feel like I need to hang on really tight. Like I’m gonna lose him at any second. I don’t know why. I’m not psychic or even pretending to think that I am, but for some odd reason I feel like one of these days I’m gonna wake up and he’s not gonna be there, and that scares the shit out of me. I’m not sure what I would do. I can’t lose him. Not now. Not ever.
I wanna grow old with him and have kids, grandkids and eventually great-grandkids. I want to laugh together when we can’t shower ourselves anymore. I want to cook him dinner before he gets home from work every night. I want to live with him in the perfect brick house we always talk about. 3 kids. I want girls, he wants boys, but that’ll work itself out. I want to get a puppy. I want to get a fish, and a cat, and a frog. I want to decorate the house together, and help out with all our chores. I want to walk down the aisle with him waiting, hot as hell in his tuxedo to say I do. I want to write an amazing wedding speech, but chicken out and only read it to him when we’re alone. I want to slow dance with him to our song, if we ever have one. But what if he gets stolen from me? It’s almost as if he’s slowly distancing himself so that when he’s gone for good it’s not such a surprise. I don’t want to lose him, I can’t.
I want him to hold me right now as I start to cry. I want him to walk through that door and tell me that everything is alright and that he’s never going to leave and that I’m exactly the girl that he wants, and will always want. I want him to kiss me softly and show me that he’s not just saying that to silence my tears. I need all that. I need it to be like it used to be, him and me, and no one else. But it’s not. It’s all these other people, and not a single one matters to me but him. I wish he’d wake up and realize that I’m the only one he needs too. But am I? Will I always be?
It’s paralyzing to have to wonder if you’re enough. To wonder if it’ll always be me in his dreams, or if one day there just might be another. He’s the only one I’ll ever yearn for. He’s the only one I’ll ever truly love.
I know sometimes he doubts that fact, thinks that TJ got there first. He never did. I didn’t love TJ. I fell in love with the idea of him more than anything. I wanted to love him, but it was an odd sort of love. The kind that you know is doomed from the beginning. I always had to second guess myself with him, still even today I have to second guess our friendship. He was never enough for me. David’s a different story. He has been since day one. He wanted me, he loved me, and he wasn’t afraid to show it. He put me first, and maybe that’s selfish to want that, but it felt great to be cared for. It feels great. I’m in love, and it hurts a lot of the time recently but I’m still in love. I’d do anything for his kiss, his touch, his smell even. That screams first love, so nothing before this matters, nothing. Even with TJ around, it doesn’t show me what I’m missing out on, it shows me what I wasted my time on. I wasted four years being wrapped up in this kid that’s still as fucked up today as he was then. He’s going nowhere. I needed to wait those four years though, in order for david to come around. I needed to be unattached and wanting when he was ready to knock on my door.
That’s the funny thing about love and timing. It’s always perfect. So maybe I just need to wait. Wait for the moment when everything turns out just the way I wanted it to. It won’t be today, or even tomorrow, but maybe the next day. It still hurts though. I miss him holding me, and hearing his breathing as I go to sleep. I miss having him there when I wake up. Maybe he does too. Maybe it’ll all be okay.
I love you David Jon-Michael Worrell. Don’t ever question that.
Love battered and broken, but still somehow standing,
Jenny

Teenage Love or the Lack-there-of

I never considered the kind of love that I'm experiencing to be either juvenile, or fleeting. I never saw it as so-called "teenage love" or "highschool romance" because in my mind it was never anything close to that. It was something to joke or play with... ever. It was something that him and I both knew was going to be forever, or for at least such a large amount of time that it replicated the meaning of forever. We spent our days playing out the scenes of romeo and juliet. except we didn't die. and our families never fought. okay not so much romeo and juliet, I guess but you get the idea. We were meant to be. destined. and i believed that. believED. funny how one silly argument changes that. how suddenly your entire world is off kilter and you are forced to question everything you stand for. everything you've fought for. everything you've lost. we'd never fought before this, nothing huge anyway. we'd make up, kiss, and hold eachother before bed. that didn't happen this time. it has yet to happen. so i have to question what we're doing here. is it really just young love? is it the relationship that will eventually get left behind because we've grown so far past it? i hope to god i'm wrong. i hope to god we can overcome this because i don't know how to live without him. i don't want to. but at the same time i dont want to hurt anymore. i don't want to keep getting thrown full force into this depression, but here i am, chin deep and choking. i'm drowning again. who'll save me if he doesnt want to be around anymore.

this wouldn't hurt so much if i didnt have to question our future. but those 3 children, two girls one boy, are fading fast. the house is changing shape, disappearing. there isn't a chocolate lab, or a white picket fence. we're not together. we're not happy. i haven't lived past us either. i'm dead, and buried without him, i wish he'd see that.

i can't lose him.

i can't live without him.

i can't breathe.

my heart would burst if it hadn't already broken.

lovesick in the dieing sort of way,
Jenny

Final Destination Depression

The doors are all locked and shut tight, the covers drawn, and lights down. The music’s softly playing in the background, but no matter what happens I can’t settle my mind on this particular night. Not that there’s anything outstanding about it really, the same thing has happened on countless other nights. To be honest, the same thing happens every night. I’m never completely settled, the feeling is just magnified because I don’t have those strong protective arms surrounding me, or the calming sound of his breathing. I don’t have his warmth, or his calming presence, and it kind of hurts. It brings the demons in a little deeper knowing that he isn’t there to ward them away. At the same time though, I know that I need this. I need this time to reflect because night after night I’ve been thinking these exact same thoughts. These exact same problems keep wreaking havoc on my mind and on my concentration. They are consuming me as surely as they are completely strange and unknown to me. I mean, I don’t know why I’m thinking the way that I am lately. It’s weird. I’m resigned to that fact though, I know that I’m eccentric, a little out of the ordinary tonight, and it’s okay, because I’m here alone with my thoughts. The music has been silenced, the dryer is filling the void. I can still hear it though, still hear the sounds of the soft singing, if only in my head. It makes me wonder, crazily if maybe I’m hearing it in another somewhere. That probably doesn’t make sense to you, and that’s okay. I’ll explain, just give me time to process what I’m feeling. I think somehow it’s profound, maybe it explains more about me than I ever deemed worthy of figuring out. Final Destination is my favorite movie of all time. Not because of the hot actors sitting center stage in it, but because of a single scene. A scene, that in it’s entirety didn’t change or warp the movie in any way, it didn’t move the plot along, or explain anything that you couldn’t have otherwise figured out. It was just there, waiting to pull me in. I can hear the words in my head of that scene. I think somewhere deep down I know it by heart. Devon Sawa’s character looks at clear and asks her if she thinks that somewhere out there their flight was still flying to Europe, if maybe in some alternate timeline they had made it safely there. He wonders that if this tragedy took place in his time, if maybe somewhere else happier it didn’t. She in return says sure I wish there was that place, a place where her father hadn’t needed cigarettes and had stayed home the night that he left and got killed, a place where her mother didn’t run off and leave her to deal with the aftermath. But they don’t have that place, all they have is the here and now. That scene captured me because that’s the question I had been trying to ask myself since I lost my father. I wanted there to be this place where he didn’t get sick, and he didn’t die and we were all happily living together as one fucked up family. I want that place more than I’ve let myself admit. More than I will ever let anyone know. Anyway I started reading this book called From the Corner of His Eye, and in this book every single person was interconnected and woven together to generate this ultimate goal, that has absolutely nothing to do with what I’m trying to say here. What I want to explain is that in this book there are hundreds of thousands of planes of existence. Every single choice in one’s life branches off. There is a place where my father chose to stay with my mother, but he still got sick and died. There’s a place where he never got a sick, and a place where it was worse. There’s a thousand shades of gray in a thousand different characteristics in each world, but each in turn has it’s tragedies. They are separate, removed, do not effect one another, but they all have their traumas, and their terrifics. The problem with entertaining these ideas, is how much I want to be in another reality, one that parallels my own, but not to the point where I can recognize it. There’s so many variables that you can’t really pinpoint what you want to change you know? What if I had kissed TJ on that grand day that I can’t seem to forget when I ended up at his house in tears and in his bed with him caressing me? Would we have ended up together, or would I be more broken than I am now? What if I hadn’t betrayed Jessi’s trust? Would she still have moved to California? Would I still have David? That’s the ultimate question. If my father was in my life, if TJ was there solely as a friend, if I had never ever gone to the lengths to betray Jessi that I did, would I still have ended up with the love of my life as closely woven into my heart? Maybe in some somewhere. I dunno if it makes it better or worse if it’s possible, but will never amount to happening. Is it comforting to know that that place is there? Would it be better to know that my father could walk me down the aisle at my and David’s wedding in another place, but he can’t here? Maybe I’d miss it more. Maybe I’d be dead today, I don’t really know. Freak car crash with my father at the wheel, possibly. Maybe I never would have gotten close to TJ at all, and he would have killed himself when he had the chance months ago. Every event in my life succumbs to the moment that I lost my father. If I hadn’t lost him I wouldn’t have gained the friends, and love that I have in my life now, but it isn’t a welcomed loss. I will never step back and see it for the greater good that was intended. He didn’t need to be taken. He was the most kind, generous, misunderstood, but still loving man that I ever knew, and he deserved better. He deserved a full life. Maybe he got that. Maybe in the years he had he gained everything that I think isn’t possible in 36 years. But then again maybe he didn’t. I hate the fact that I’ll never know. Unless there’s that somewhere, where all wrongs have been righted and I’m as happy as I can possibly be. I only wish someday to glimpse myself in that kind of glory.
Broken, bleeding into the existence of the what-ifs of my dreams,
Jenny

Here I go again, off the rocker, off the floor. I'm hurting from these numbing pains, that aren't existant anymore. If I were just a fraction more, deluded, or self involved, maybe I'd have a factory named after me, and the puzzle could be solved. But I'm no inventor, no self-representer, or attention hog. I'm simply me, please no recognition or applause. I'm the leader of the followers, what's the next turn i should take? I'm the ringleader of the disillusioned, what secret entrance must we make? And if there are no answers, or simple solutions, or gradious causes, simply lead us to the dragon's quarters, there will be blood, but no honor or safety clauses. We'll self destruct at any minute, stay clear of the gun. The only thing we were ever taught was stay put, and never run. Run run run away, but never have the nerve to stray. We like to think we're poets, writers, or just creative bets. But we're simply rhyming fools, with tics to keep our imaginations wet. Speaking in the form of multiple personalites always makes me feel less alone, but the only thing I can think to remember are the sins for which i must atone. Stay back, don't worry, I'll get to the end of this sad sob story. the path to this wonderful ending has been under construction for quite some time, there's a detour, but believe it's not worth your time.

Back to the Beginning

So here I am again, or maybe more precisely, here I am back where I always end up. It’s that place that you never quite want to be, but end up there anyway. Every time you get there you recognize it. It has the same signs, the same surroundings, but surprisingly a much different road leading there. It’s always a different path, always different choices and different circumstances, but you always end up in the same place. In the same circle, with the same problems, and the same escapes. Being such a creative person you’d think that I’d be able to write myself out of these kind of holes. You’d think that I’d be able to make different choices, leading to different circumstances, and different roads, and eventually different destinations. But my roads lead in one direction. My roads lead to what I’ve only just realized is what I define as home. Home was always an odd concept to me, anyway. It was never a place, or rather any physical place. It was always a state of mind. It was a group of places, or people, or feelings that coalesced to a single idea that I just knew somehow was home. It was the place I yearned for when I wasn’t there, but hated when I was trapped inside. I missed it, but at the same time I never wanted to miss it, or maybe I realized that in effect I shouldn’t miss it. But I do, even sitting here knee deep in it’s aftermath. I miss it. And in reality all it is, is this place where things cannot possibly ever get worse, and the only thing that can happen is that things start to look up. It’s the tail-end of depression, the last step to recovery, the first step to mental freedom. And every time I’m there I don’t want to take it. I don’t want to walk away from this place, because I know for a fact that no matter what I do, or where I go, or who I meet, or who I fall in love with, or what friends come screaming and running full force back into my life, that I’m going to end up back here. But it’s home, and I’ll always have a special place for it in my heart, and in my soul, but mainly in my mind. I want it back already and I’m still in it. Where I was going with this I have no idea, because all I turned this computer on for was to play pinball, but now sitting here I have about a million things to say. Life has been low lately. I’ve been crying a lot, mainly when I’m alone, but a lot of times when I’m not too. Things between me and David have been strained. He’s pushing away, and I’m clinging on. Not to say I’m clingy, I just hate the fact that no matter what I seem to do I can’t keep that love, or affection between us. I never thought in a million years that he’d get tired of kissing me, and it’s hard for me even to type that because I don’t want it to be true, but then again it’s the truth, and there’s no secrets here. It’s hard to keep up three fourths of the relationship I guess, and I think I’m driving him crazy with it, but I don’t want to lose it. I don’t want to be one of those couples that can’t stand to be around each other, or that get into this routine that they can’t break out of. But here we are, living the routine. He goes to work, I go to school, and about every other day I come over to his house to help him clean, sit back, in another room while he bonds with the boys until he’s ready to go to bed. We don’t go out anymore. We don’t have time alone anymore. It feels like I’m losing him slowly. Not that I need his attention and time every second of every day, I just need my time too. And sure we’re together a lot, hell we’re together more than a lot, but it’s never just us, and even if it is just us sitting in his bedroom, it’s not just us because kenny and adam are a couple rooms over and he’ll leave in a second if they call. I don’t know, I guess I feel like I’ve been kinda shifted to the backburner or something. I’m not the number one priority for him anymore, and it’s hard for me process because he’ll always be number one for me. I will blow off my friends, my family, even my schoolwork for him if he calls, but I feel bad and awkward if I ask him to come in 2 minutes early from being with the guys. Like I’m depriving him of his time alone. I shouldn’t have to feel like that. I don’t want to feel like that, but every time I bring it up he needs his alone time, or he can’t be with me 24-7. That’s never what I’m asking for, I just wish he knew that. I wish he knew how much I love him, and how much it hurts me when he pushes me away, or tells me that he doesn’t wanna touch me, or kiss me, or fuck me. It rips me apart when I have to hear that. Am I becoming his routine? Is he sick of the monotony? Does he want to move on but isn’t admitting it? It’s stupid and ridiculous to wonder any of this, to even type it out, but it’s what I think about all the time. He says I’m beautiful and hot and everything he’s ever wanted, but he changes so much, am I still all that? After finding everything out that he has about me does he still think that I’m that perfect girl he was always searching for? Does he think less of me now that he knows without barriers or lies or false personas who I really am? Sometimes I wonder if I haven’t disappointed him. I’m not his perfect little church girl that follows all the rules and does right in the world. Sometimes I have to question if god really even exists. Maybe I only say that because I wanna keep my mind open, I guess what I really wonder is if he really doesn’t exist. I’m a freethinker. I think out of the box. I don’t just go on what I see or hear or taste or smell. I know there is an entire world out there that I will never know about or see, and I know for a fact it’s there. But still I wonder if god exists. With a god out there would the world truly be like it is today? The world has gone to hell, and I honestly don’t think that any god as all-knowing and all-seeing as the one that so many people believe in can actually exist. No god would let some things that happen in this world happen. But then again there’s the other side of the spectrum. Maybe all these things are happening today because not enough people believe in god. Not enough people devote themselves to him, so he doesn’t have as much power as he used to. Either way, he’s not this great all highly being that everyone thinks he is. He’s just like us. He fucks up, he fails. So why worship? This doesn’t really ever bother me, except for when David makes me feel so inadequate for not believing, like I’m missing out or something. I’m not missing out, I’m just sick of being misinformed I guess. Misguided is probably a better word. In the end I guess I have a 50/50 chance. Heaven exists or it doesn’t. I get in or I don’t. There’s no reason to waste my life wondering, or chasing a cause that might not be there. I just wish that david could respect that side of me. The non-religious one. But none of it matters. None of this is leading anywhere or to anything good I guess. I’m just upsetting myself more because I’m realizing what is so wrong in my life and that I have no concrete way of fixing it or bettering anything. Maybe I just need to roll with it. I need to lighten up, and take things as they come. The days are warming up, the skies are getting bluer and brighter and I’m still in my shades of grey, it’s time to change with the seasons. Springtime is my season, my time, my freedom. Open my wings, fly away and take those that believe with me. It’s gonna be a wild ride, or at least an eventful one.

Fuck It

Do you think there's fate? do you think that everything in this fucked up world has it's place and it's reason and it's need to exist? because I think it's utter and complete bullshit. I wasted an entire hour of my life getting on here and typing out every last thing I could remember about my father because I felt like I was losing him, and I get a phone call, and I try to download something on limewire, and I come back to this screen and it's just gone. Tell me this happened for a reason. Tell me that there is a god out there and he saw me truly trying to help myself and get better and he let some freak internet quirk erase it all away. This world is fucked. and I'm fucked up. I need this all down in typing, and I need it to be preserved, so i'm starting over, and I will duplicate every last thing that I remember writing.

I'm standing on the edge of I have no idea where I am, and I'm not sure I want to know. It's this sickening place where I jsut want to jump, but I'm not even sure what I"m jumping too, or maybe away from. It's just the adrenaline, the feeling that nothign can touch followed by a split second of pure pain before it bleeds out of your consciousness and you are left completely and utterly numb. I want to be numb again. And I'm not even sure why. My friends are back and behind me 100%. me and my boyfriend are fantastic, he has his problems, i have mine, but we are not each others problems. we're finally okay. but there are days when i still feel empty deep inside. Days where I know a piece of me is still missing and is never ever coming back.

I should be used to that spot, I should be comfortable knowing that nothing and no amount of healing will fill it. I can visit his grave, and talk about him, and look at pictures of him, but nothing will help. nothing will heal. nothing will change. he is gone. and he's not coming home to me.

the worst part of this entire ordeal is that I can't remember what he smelled like, or what color his eyes were. I don't remember his favorite color, or television show, or even song. I can't remember if his hands were soft or rough or in between. it's slipping through my fingers, and he's slipping through my consciousness. I fear that everyday he is gone I lose a new memory... even if i am trying so desperately to hold on.

I don't want my children to ask me about him 10 years down the road and not have answers to the simplest questions. I can't stand looking in the mirror knowing that I'm leaving him behind, that I have forgotten him. After all, I'm the writer of this family. I am the only one that I know of that takes the time to let everythign that happens to me bleed through my fingertips and onto paper. I should have written it down. But I failed him, and myself when I didn't. I am failing my father by not preserving his memory.

so here's the list... again... in no particular order. Every painstaking detail that is left, because it needs to be remembered, to be written down. he was the greatest man I ever knew and people need to know him. if only through this journal and my head, and my take on who he was.

he made a killer apple pie.

he liked poinsettas on christmas.

he thought he was some kind of photographer, even tho he was horrible at it.

he loved animals.

he grew a pot plant in the hallway bathroom never thinking that us kids would know what it was.

he couldn't type worth a damn.

he wore an army jacket or a flannel jacket 99% of the time that the weather called for it.

his shoes were always untied.

he was only ever at home outdoors.

he was gentle.

he was loving.

he was the richest man, if only in love.

money did not make a difference in his life.

roses were his favorite flower to take care of.

he took us to the park and brought wax paper so we could make the slide extra slick.

he hunted for arrowheads and morrell mushrooms.

he was obsessed with indian life, not only because of his heritage, but because he liked their way of life.

he took a thousand pictures but hardly ever developed the film.

his eyes were brown.

his hair was thick and brown too.

he loved nash bridges adn cheech and chong.

he bought a real live christmas tree every year for christmas before he moved out of my mom's house.

he loved beef jerky.

we made sugar cookies together every year.

he hated cleaning.

he drove a red pick up truck.

he took us to chuckee cheese.

he loved country music

his smile was crooked.

he loved twinkies, and anything else hostess.

he made even the simplest outings fun.

his favorite place to go out and eat was ryan's buffet.

he loved his and everyone else's children.

he built dollhouses.

he wanted to build a canoe.

he was a great fisherman, and taught me everything he knew.

he didn't want me to miss him.

he believed in me.

he never judged.

he had hairy toes, i guess everyone has their flaws.

he used old spice aftershave sometimes.

he bit his nails.

he called me jen jen.

i'll add to the list later, i feel better, but like i said nothign will ever fill this hole. nothing will ever make any of this okay. i don't even know where to go from here, other than bed.

remember forever what you will someday forget,
jenny

Pain Is Learning

we're drowning in the trenches
we're choking on our indecision
is this pain we're feeling worth it
am i learning from anything at all?

sometimes i wonder if it were only easier
if i could let the currents drag me under
and take me out to the sparkling silver rivers
that lie just past the world i am not.

if pain were the only reminder in a world of chaos to do right by one's self and others, would we even pay attention? is pain anything? can it be nothing?

I sat at my computer earlier today having a virtual conversation with a virtual friend. I call him that simply because that is what he is to me now. He's a bunch of words appearing on a computer screen because he refuses to come to life for me, in every sense of the word. Come to think of it he always did refuse. I'm not sure when he died inside, but the funeral has long since been conducted and I am the sole survivor mourning the loss. There is so much pain inside of him that it radiates from his every touch, look, even typed word. He is, in every essence, pain. It's all he knows. It's all he'll let himself become now. It didn't used to bother me, it didn't used to literally hurt me, but today, for the first time, it did. This got me thinking because the way i have been taught pain is a lesson, something that needs to be learned.

Think about it, we've been taught this way since the very day we were born. When we did something wrong we were slapped on the bottom or wrist. The pain taught us not to act up. Growing out of my toddler days I had quite a large problem with sucking my thumb. One day i was playing and fell and scraped up my entire thumb leaving it bloody and scabbed. Later that same day I stuck my thumb in my mouth because it was my routine and screamed in pain. I never sucked my thumb again. The pain taught me that I shouldn't. Later my mother had a problem with my brother and I jumping on the bed. It didn't matter how many times I was scolded, I didn't listen. Not until I was jumping on the bed and fell off and cut my face up on the window ledge did I learn not to do it. I could go on and on with these examples, the point is that pain is the greatest teacher in a human's life. We don't like to hurt, or should I say, we shouldn't. It teaches us to be careful, to be smart, to do the right thing.

It's not only physical either. The mental pains are probably the worst. The problem is that they can be deceiving as well. Emotional pain cuts to the very heart of everything we are, to be human is to have emotions, and to have those emotions pained is cataclysmic. It alters us, changes us deep inside.