Pain

It starts as such a little thing... a twinge here and there, a strain or ache after some serious exertion, a niggle after a restless night; you, and your invulnerable immortality, laugh at its pathetic influence...

Next... the niggles become something more gratifying; something for your bravado to overcome, something to overcome with joy, and in overcoming proving strength, fortitude and resilience...

To stand, like stone, among the crashing waves of what you foolishly believe to be pain, and once more throw back your head and laugh, for such paltry things do little but affirm your authority over the nuisances of this world’s realm.

Unfortunately, you’ve always been a fool, and all too soon you come to realise the magnitude of your idiocy. First, in spit and spat, few and far between, but with growing vehemence, ‘pain’ becomes a word you never truly understood. Now, what once you‘d appellate as ‘pain’, is now demoted to ‘irritation’, or ‘distraction’, and that rare encounter with ‘agony’, becomes a word you understand to a fuller, more... comprehensive, degree...

Eventually, from the constancy emerges something only regular interaction might allow. A black comedy, a dark, giggling, half manic despair of humour, bubbling up between the deepest of moans, and the grinding of teeth. Looking back at your magnificence you realise all you wasted, all you might have... appreciated, and in this understanding comes nothing but a darker comedy...

That what you feel now as your darkest night... might yet be nothing but the murmur of beginnings...