Pain, be it short lived or excruciating, always leaves behind a scar in its place. Something to remember the dark emotion. There is sweet pain- pain you feel from reliving the memories from a long lost friend. And there is crushing pain- the deepest level of depression. But like the wound that heals, the pain must subside. In the recent past, whenever things have gone really wrong, I have been told, and I have in turn told others including myself – ‘Its ok, things will get better. The pain will go away and happier days will come again.’ Physical pain can subside with medication. The emotional tugs – constant tugs at your heart are tougher to handle. Sometimes we even camouflage our pained feelings – with anger or worse, normalcy. And then when the feelings well-up like the septic wound, we hunt for the immediate solution. We try to subside the surface pain but leave the wound exposed. Reaching out for a pitcher of beer or a tub of ice-cream or worse a combination, will only cause serious health problems hours after the immediate ‘mood up-lifting’ experience is over.

If you drink the morning after your hung over – your head-ache only gets worse. We know this but somehow we tend to repeat the same mistakes we have made in the past and keep experiencing the pain over and over. Soon the pain is something you get used to. Something that becomes a part of your life. You know you are in deep trouble when you cant acknowledge that life is precious – life‘s moments are precious.

Pain is an anomaly. A deviation. One way of dealing with it is – you tell yourself it won’t happen again. You have learnt your lesson. You will move on in life and forget your past so that the sunken feeling goes way. But before you find ways to move on you need to first believe you can. And for that you need to introspect. I have fought introspection. Just could not do it. Now it has caught up with me. I know I want to hear myself aloud. I want to ask myself questions I don’t want to hear the answers to. But these answers put everything in perspective – get me the reality check I want to avoid. I want to introspect now in between work- at the expense of work even. And work was my excuse earlier to not have time to introspect! I think dealing with pain is similar to dealing with fear – face it, accept it and then you can fight it.

Knowing that I have dealt with pain in the past gives me the faith that I can cross the bridge when I come to it. But I’d rather feel pain than be numb. Lets me know I am alive. And normal.