Hanna F. Cross

Ok...pain.

What is pain?

...you know, this could be harder than the last one...just because it's another broad topic, but everybody can interpret pain differently...and there's so many different kinds of pain. Physical, emotional, mental...and those are different from person to person. Let's face it, there is no one definition of what pain is.


I mean, I guess you could go with a dictionary definition of pain, but I don't really think that's what they want...

So. Uh. Ok, I guess...what's pain for me?

Ok. Here we go.

It's weird...pain is like this bizarre paradox. It's awful and terrible, and nobody should ever have to suffer it...but at the same time...to feel pain is to feel all the things that come along with it, like sadness and anger and eventually recovery and hope. Right? So, if you can feel pain, and you can get past it to feel all those other things, it's like pain is the tell tale sign that you're alive. That you can feel.

And I don't mean alive in the whole heart beating, breathing way, since I know that's not completely true. I mean in the emotional way. Pain shows you can feel, that you're alive in spirit, even if you're not alive in body.

Ok, example? Example!

When I was a kid...hmm. Ok, bad example...how about...hmm, no, that doesn't really work either...uh...ok, I'll just make up an example! That way it's not too personal and uncomfortable, woo!

Ok, so there is this kid named...uh...lets go with Chett. Chett is a good name, if not a bit too 90's.
Chett is a nerd and gets beaten up all the time by basically everybody. So he doesn't really have any friends cuz he's a nerd and a bully magnet.
So yeah, Chett is sad and feels physical pain from getting the snot kicked out of him all the time...and overall, Chett's life sort of sucks and it just sort of gets worse...but one day, Chett grows up!
And he goes away and makes a lot of friends somewhere else, and the emotional pain he felt from being lonely starts to heal, until he is able to look on the past and feel sad and little pain, yeah...but he can appreciate the pain because it made all the good feelings even better!

So yeah. Pain is being alive and making all the good things in life even better. The end.


Aaaand, I swear, that all made way more sense in my head. I'm not exactly an eloquent speaker or essay writer...which is probably why my English essays all came out really bizarre sounding when I was in school. And I thought I was done writing terrible essays, ha!

Ah well.

I gave it my all. I reeeeally hope I don't have to write another essay though, my brain got a cramp trying to find a way to define pain in a nondepressing not personal way.
And speaking of pain, now I really want ice cream...for some reason, this essay writing business made me crave brain freeze.
I think my brain is trying to make a point here, what with brain freeze equals pain equals bad, but it also means ice cream which equals awesome.

Uhhh...

Who wants to go out and prove my point with me? It's iiiiice creeeeam...~

Oh! And I did get to ride a sea turtle. It was awesome.