Thoughts on a dragon

Pain.

It's something we we all think about, but rarely truly empathize with.

We dramatize it. We imagine ourselves desperate heroes, courageously fighting despite gaping wounds and gasping breathe. We feel our hearts throb with joy as we watch stories of people overcoming pain to defeat their foes at long last.

Pain, in our culture, is often a dragon. And we thrill to see it defeated by our heroes. We thrill to see our heroes be beaten to the ground, be beaten past all endurance--only to rise at long last to defeat their dragons.

There's nothing wrong with that.



But there's one thing we forget:

Pain is alone. Pain is uncommunicated. To be in pain, is to be alone. John Green talked about this saying something along the lines of when you are in pain, you can never really explain it to someone else. Because they aren't feeling it. (sorry, couldn't find the exact quote-- I looked! But no such luck. It was from a vlog brothers video...)


That somehow really stuck with me, echoing around in my mind over and over again. Because recently, I've started to understand it.

I have a very screwed up body with VERY messed up muscles. Long story short, I've been in pain for over a year now. It's gotten better now, and I've started to heal, but I spent a solid six months with pain which nobody could figure out how to fix, which IBProphen couldn't fix, and which there seemed no immediate solution presenting itself.

And what I think my jumbled thoughts have formulated is this: Pain is not the dragon we think it is, but that doesn't make it not a dragon.

Explanation of formulated jumble:

For an injury, an illness, a problem, a heartache, a sorrow, a loss--pain often feels like a leech. It sucks your energy. It makes easy tasks seem difficult. It fights you every day. But the worst part about pain is when it's constant with no end it sight. Because you can run a few yards with a weight on your shoulders, but try and run a marathon and you'll probably collapse.

Pain is hard. And when you can't see an end, you end up feeling like you'll never be able to win.

I have a very limited experience in this. My pain is not (hopefully) chronic. It's been getting better, and I pray that someday it will go away entirely. Not to mention, it was bad, but it could've been so much worse.

But I think I can say I still endured the dragon's flame. Pain is a dragon, but we don't realize how big it is on our tiny screens. Once we're there at the battle, we suddenly realize how large the beast is and how small we are. And we don't know how to handle it because somehow our stories have not prepared us for the real deal. And we think we're useless in this fight.

So I think my message is that just because you can't kill the dragon in one stroke doesn't make it unbeatable. Nothing can totally prepare you for your battle. You won't truly understand the heat of the flames until it is licking at your armor. And once you're there you will despair that you aren't strong enough to handle it. What you don't realize, is that you are stronger than you think. And every moment you stand strong against your foe is a victory. Every smile you give is a blow. Every selfless act you do in spite of your own misery is a strike.

You may lose the romance of the battle in the blood and wounds. Real wars hurt. They don't look beautiful. And real pain is not the romantic battle you think it is. But you can still fight it.

You can still kill your dragon.