You think you know what pain is.
I thought I knew what pain was. Abandoned my the man who pushed his grandmother’s ring onto my finger. Left homeless, jobless, car-less, dreamless, broken.
I thought I knew what pain was.
I drag myself into the doctor’s office today. My right hip, clenched into a knot they cannot undo for a year and counting, bent in agony. I cry hot tears they ignore – because they are used to me, because they are sick of me – over the thin paper covering the exam table, onto the plastic pillows, onto the ground.
If they can’t cure you, it’s all in your head.
If they can’t cure you, eventually you should just shut up about it.
I thought I knew what pain was.
Robbed of everything I had made vulnerable for love, swimming in a dark sea of splintered words and shattered promises, I grieved for almost two years before I started to wake up. Stirring in the darkness, putting a timid toe into a wading pool, I eventually dared to hope again.
I dared to hope, I dared to love, and all that man did was break my body and leave me to rot.
I am on the phone with my mother. Poor mom, she tries to calm me down. But today there is no comfort, and today there is no calming. “If that man” and I’m screaming, “if THAT man can bring down some sort of fucking death sentence on me-” and I choke on my own tears. There is nothing my anger can do to hurt him. There is nothing my sorrow can do to save me.
I am lost in agony. I cannot escape my own body. There is nothing I can do.
It is at this point that people either choose drugs or Jesus.
And I gave up on Jesus ten years ago.
I Found You in the Dark 