The Mark

I carry a lot of pain around. Some is physical, some emotional, and some an echo of pain that once was and now whose scars I bare.

Some is fresh and some lingers from decades past. Some festers, bubbling up during a drive, brushing teeth, or midst a laugh. Like a pin prick, it surprises when least expected, interrupting the most innocent of moments.

It's pain that spurs a reach for medicine, and ages past reality.

It's pain that has led me to the mark that my life is now built upon.

It can cause deep sorrow, regrets, anger, confusion, singularly or whirling together in a vortex that consumes you mind, body and soul.

But it's also pain that brings joy, thanksgiving, friendship, new life, and wisdom that lightens the path ahead.

For you see, pain leaves this unspeakable, indescribable mark on one's soul, only recognizable by another who also bares the very same. The dimensions may differ, but the mark is always the same.

Pain's mark has the uncanny ability to bring polar opposites together, forging an unbreakable bond that only leaves outsiders guessing. Like a spark in a dark cave, it is instantly noticeable, even if only on an unconscious level.

It's a survivors mark.

The point at which you pass the pain is often unremarkable. In many cases, it was just an attempt to fool the world around you that you could carry on, no matter the burden.

One day you wake up from a moment without pain and almost gasp because in fooling others, you were left the ultimate fool. Pain free, if only for a moment.

Like a match that quickly burns, it's the loss of pain that frightens as quickly as it brings joy. This cocoon of suffering that's consumed you for so long, might take leave, and in turn, the lessons, the moments endeared to you through that pain might also leave. Worse yet, in its absence, you might forget the beautiful source which borne that pain, leaving you the ultimate sinner. For what is life, if we don't learn from all its lessons?

But you see, the irony of it all is in the mark. The mark that will forever lay branded on the soul.

For it is the mark that will bring the very best in ourselves out. That same mark that will caution to painful dangers that lay ahead, and serve as a beacon for safe harbors.

It is a survivors mark, and with it, we live and we die all the more richer for it.