The Pain That We Marry, But Are Not Defined By

We grow with it. We grow to endure it. But we cannot let it become who we are.

“When you say ‘I am in pain,’ there is the pain and there is the I but the I is always bigger than the pain. Because the I is there even without the pain, while the pain is only there as a product of that I. And that I will survive and go on to feel other things.” Matt Haig, The Comfort Book.

Life is but a series a breaths.
Pain is a collection of tests.
In sickness, in health, I wrest with life.
I know this challenge, this strife.
I feel as if we are married,
And she’s my bitter, merciless wife.
Problem after problem,
She has followed me all of my life.

But I do not belong to her.
She does not define my being.
I am not pain.
I am not strife.
And though I feel it,
I know the road to heal it.
I travel it slowly.
And within me,
There is something holy
That I cannot quite describe.

These energies are evident within me,
But they are not me.

We will come into ourselves.
We will find our own lights.
Even in starless skies,
In the emptiest,
most desolate of nights.
We will find our own lights.

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