Pain.

You can find it practically everywhere you look, everywhere you go and often in the way you may address a person or an event.

The never thought of pain can be found with words like paint, painted and paintings. They symbolize something good that has been done.

Then there are the remarks:

“You are such a pain in the ass.”

“It pains me to know this.”

“I have gone to great pains to having this post completed.”

″ I feel your pain.”

“To know love, is to know pain.”

Then there is the acutal pain. Final stages of Cancer where treatments no longer work.

Alzheimer, where pain isn’t even a remembered option any longer. Brain and heart surgeries that didn’t go as planned leaving one on a contunual road of healing but never fully getting there.

We can move from this to other disorders that cause a vast amount of pain such as bipolar disorder, psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, and post traumatic stress disorder just to mention a very few. If I left out what you may be experiencing, it wasn’t on purpose. But to say none of these disorders does not have a form of pain attached would be a farce, a bold lie. People such as these live with pain every day of their life. Of course their physician prescribes a medication to lessen the mood swings which can become volatile.

According to Smitha Bhandari, MD, "Someone with Multiple Personality Disorder or more commonly called today as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). This is a mental disorder characterized by the maintenance of at least two distinct and relatively enduring personality states. The disorder is accompanied by memory gaps beyond what would be explained by ordinary forgetfulness. And each distinct person has some form of pain. Each personality is unaware of the other’s pain. A pain that is heavily deep-rooted in the mind and can take years, even decades before the cause is found. And in almost all cases, the trauma, or pain, can be found to go back to early childhood, as young as three which causes the separation of one character into two separate people, or more."

A case in point I found, is Kim Noble, recorded as havug 100 different personalities, each with a different name and each either a dominant or submissive type person, to just a regular 9-5 next door neighbor type.

If you have never seen The Three Faces of Eve, I encourage you to watch. Just ignore the foreign sub-titles --- this is based on a true story -- https://youtu.be/WRUyU18qq5c

Pain. It has been around as long as the word love has. For as long as humankind has taken a breath of air, and fought to survive on this planet.

Going back to, “I feel your pain.” you cannot. But you can try to understand the who, what and why, the way they are. Even those with serious physical ailments, especially with Covid-19, the best form of advice I can give is to just listen.

And keep in mind the vast amount of pain families go through each and every day having to deal with a family member in dire straits.

This for me, is a mind-blowing statement. According to a World Health Report, one in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives. Around 450 million people currently suffer from such conditions, placing mental disorders among the leading causes of ill-health and disability worldwide.

Remember: to know love, is to know pain. It is impossible to embrace one and not the other, but we can try, can we not?

love wins, love destroys

love is magical, love is a rollercoaster ride.

love hopes, love conquers

love betrays, love extinguishes

love believes, love is sadness

love twists and turns, love cries and weeps

love gives and takes, love comforts

love is everything, love is nothing

love is love

what is the word love to you.

Never know how much I love you, Prose

never know how much writers care

when you enclose me in your open arms

you give me heat to write and flare

sky’s the limit, I’m not censored

fellow writers flash daytime with ideas

Prose flames moonlight by its challenges

guides me along the fire of promise

shared with group of fevered creators

gypsy souls intensify my imagination

roll my verve down flamed inspiration

flared open to suggestions and thoughts

Prose exposes me to delirium of my essence

encourages me to strike in new directions

I light up when I call the name of Prose

because I know that it will treat me right

now you know how much I love you

igniting creativity until I glow my torch.

I shouldn’t have done it! Why oh why did I confess to my psychiatrist what I had done? It had been my own little secret for years but I knew I had to get it off my chest before my acidic thoughts destroyed me. What else could I do? I had tried writing it down on paper as a release and then burning my confession but it didn’t work as well as I would have liked.

I had spent almost a year getting nowhere with my doctor. He was watching me closely and saying nothing as I began my story.

“I had a boyfriend named Darren who treated me like an angel. But I made the mistake of telling him about the baby I had when I was sixteen which I had given up for adoption. Because of this choice, I was able to finish school and become a physical therapist and even my parents didn’t know. But now Darren knew and he kept harassing me to tell my parents and try to find the baby. I didn’t want to. I was happy, making good money and respected in my field. But he wouldn’t let up and I was desperate, afraid that he might tell my parents. It really was his fault because he made me feel guilty as I relived that terrible time in my life.” Tears were coursing down my cheeks as I made this confession to my doctor.

“How did you resolve it?” asked Dr. Ogden.

“Well,” I sighed, “I had no choice but to get rid of the problem. Darren and I were mountain hiking when he slipped and fell off the cliff. The rocks were loose and the authorities agreed that it was an accident. I never knew how terrible it would be to see his crushed and broken body at the bottom.”

“Was it an accident?” Dr. Ogden looked at me closely as I answered.

I knew he suspected that I had pushed Darren to his death. “I won’t admit that I had anything to do with it.” But I knew he had come to his own conclusion.

I remembered feeling a small sense of relief when I burned the paper earlier in which I wrote my confession about giving up my baby.

I will burn my world and also, will burn my past completely, I thought. So what could I do? Dr. Ogden now knew about Darren. I must ‘burn the doctor’ so to speak. I took out my pistol and shot him. Dead men tell no tales.

A star was lifting me up.

I was seeing a new world.

God was looking at me.

He was also helping the star.

One group doing social work,

is lifting me and giving shelter

to me at a monastery.

I am feeling blessed.

Future looked like hundred

moons going around me.

All moons were giving light.

I had to work daily in office. I had no chance of writing poetry or literature in office.

I fell ill and the disease was diagnosed to be “Denghi”

I was put in ICU and I had to be on the bed without getting down from bed for 10 days.

I was feeling bored and I asked doctor,”Give me pen and paper. I would write quatrains for small children.”

Other doctor also heard and all others started laughing.

“You can take rest. After the disease is cured you can write whatever you want”

“After disease is cured, I have to go to office. There I can’t write. These 10 days chance I have got. God has given me this.”

“So you wish that diseases should attack you, so that you can keep away from office?”

Everybody laughed.

“Anyhow disease has come and I am utilizing chance, that is all. It doesn’t mean that I love diseases.”

Everybody laughed.

They gave pen and paper and I wrote up to the contentment for 10 days. Then I was kept in general ward for 5 days and I had my chance again for 5 more days.

I applied those to poem competitions and got a prizes#

One group of thirty families was there. They used to have get-together once in a month. One month it used to be in one house and next month it used to be in another one’s house. Like that it was going in circular fashion. Once it was in Surekha’s house. She told,

“By the side, my sister-in-law’s house is there. Some days ago it caught fire and all the family members died except one boy.”

Aish: When all his family members have died, alone what he will do? You set him also afire. You only will get that side land also.

Syma was looking at Aish with awe. Aish didn’t extend eye contact and was cool and calm as if she hasn’t told any serious words at all. Still, 4 or five ladies were standing around and nobody talked anything. Surekha also didn’t talk anything. Everybody kept quiet.

After one year or so Aish’s son died in an accident. Syma got a flashback of what Aish told earlier. Syma felt that there is some supernatural power.

My life is like a wave

Starting small

Getting bigger

And then crashing

Into nothing

I reach the top

Only to be thrown back down

To the very bottom

Violently

And then it all begins again

I go back to the start

Rise

And then fall

Over and over

And I never learn

I never figure out

That I can’t stay on the top

I will always crash

I will always get hurt

I will always fall

Into the sand

I don’t understand

How I can pick myself up

And ignore my tear stained cheeks

I don’t understand

How every single time

I run back

To the same thing

That leaves my body aching

Again and again and again

Will this be my end?

Will I be controlled

By the ocean

By the forces greater than me

For my whole life?

What if I refused to get up?

What if I stayed in the sand

Trying desperately

To let it hide me?

Would I be forgotten?

Or would they drag me back

To fall

Once more?