Pain

I got hit in the head with a soccer ball once. Kicked by a 6 ft something man, the ball jerked off the ground in a fiery rage. It's journey met with an abrupt halt as it made impact with the bones of my skull. Shocked, the ball ricocheted off my head and landed disgruntled in the green grass. As I reminded my body how to breath, I blinked away the tears that fell embarrassingly down my face. I think I made a sound, something in between a nervous laugh and a giggle, and assured the other players - staring at me nervously- that it was nothing at all. A few minutes later, attention free, I left the field, found a secluded spot, and cried like a baby.

It's amazing how other stimuli can bring about that same jolt of pain. Stimuli that have no business having the power to well up your eyes or make you feel nauseous. Like the gag reflex, such stimuli pay no mind to how you may have been feeling mere seconds before. You might have been smiling lazily at a pretty memory when suddenly, a recollection of an earnest "I really, really love you" will feel like you just took a sip of poison. Except your heart burns, not your esophagus. Recalling my moms words as she stroked my face when I visited, "Oh my Child, Is going to leave me again?" spoken in a woven mixture of love and sadness and Urdu springs unbridled tears every time. Remembering "It's been 6 months now, I'm over it", hearing it in your mind repeatedly like a broken record from hell, feels like you're IN hell. All simple arrangements of letters and sounds, each with the power to make you curl up into a ball.

At least with the soccer ball, once the initial pain from the impact subsided and I cried it out, the incident was over and done with. These emotional tortures though, are like bug spray resistant roaches. The pain springs up, lips curled, like an evil Jack-in-the-Box, the same momentum and force every - single - time. Crying, in this world of pain and torture, is fuel.

Then, as easy as it came, it goes away. Look, a flower. Feel, a warm breeze. Taste, mmmm chocolate.