Life is pain.
That’s what they say.
Pain—
physical, emotional, mental—
it touches everyone.
So mine is not unique,
I would say.
Pain is life.
Life is pain.

But endless pain—
that is a different animal.
It never stops.
It slinks beside you,
sleeps in your bones,
a feral thing
slithering through your soul,
feeding on your light.

It steals.
Dreams.
Desires.
Hope.
You begin to speak
of the Time Before Pain
like a lost country—
a utopia
you once called home.

Now the present is war.
Every day a siege,
every hour
a whisper of resistance:
beat it
conquer it
survive it.

This pain lives off you.
It eats your basics,
hollows your core.
You stop wanting love.
You stop wanting wealth.
You want one thing only:
the cessation of pain.

And the future?
A fog, a flicker—
maybe there,
a life beyond this.
But now—
now, pain fills you,
poisoning your soul
against the fragile thread of hope.

It fills you
with anger,
with emptiness,
with a raw and aching need—
the need
for someone
to see you.

To see beyond
the red, raging storm,
past the mask,
into the trembling self
still curled
in the heart of it all—
and simply
see
you.