"One of the challenges with pain - physical or psychic - is that we can only approach it through metaphor. It can't be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways, pain is the opposite of language. And we are such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn't real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimise. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless, inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with. Nor do either of those terms connote the courage people in such pains exemplify."
As usual, John Green is right. How does one describe pain? I had a recent encounter when I was asked to describe pain based on a numerical chart and, through the haze of pain, my brain can actually form a coherent thought, "This is bull." How would one know whether the intense pain should be a 5 or a 8? How would one know whether there could be a pain that can be worse because, at this very moment, the pain is so severe that it feels like the world is closing in on you?
In a way, pain defies a fundamental belief that I hold close to heart. I have always believed that I can make something work through sheer hard work. It doesn't matter that things are shitty now, I can fix it if I work hard enough. But pain defies that. You cannot work hard to make the pain go away. You cannot work hard to not be ill anymore.
As usual, John Green makes me emo. Thank god I am an eternal optimist.
