When you feel them hurt

When you are in pain, you feel it completely. You feel everything and anything. The pain is so deep and so complete that you feel like you might die. When you are in pain, you can’t imagine ever feeling worse. You feel every facet of pain, and then you say you never want to feel it again.

The day comes when you hear them crying in front of you, or through texts, or on the phone. You hear their breathless sobs, their intakes of breath, their choked words. In that moment you would do anything for them to not feel that pain. You would take it into yourself if you could, even though you vowed to never let another person make you hurt. You would drown in a pain foreign to your own, so much more daunting for its vast depths of unknown.

You feel powerless because you know that anything you do is just tape, glue or a pretty bow. You know that no matter how much you help, they still have a scar or a crack or a chip, just like you have from your moment of pain.

When you hear them hurt, you feel like you can handle any pain. If you’re at your breaking point or at your finest hours you know that you would let yourself chip, let yourself break, let yourself shatter, if only they didn’t have to.

If only I could shatter so they wouldn’t break.