Hope
A few years ago one of the recurring statements in TN groups was that we should have hope.
Hold
On
Pain
Ends
I have always known that my pain would get worse. I have always known that there is no cure. As the medication options failed, I had hope when surgical intervention was a possibility.
I had hope.
What happens when that hope is gone? How do you motivate yourself to just live with it. To know that your independence is, and will continue to, slowly being leeched from your existence. That, just as the hours of functionality in the day reduce, so does your acceptance of the fact that this is life.
That's the thing about pain. It is a very personal experience. An assault on your being in a way others cannot necessarily see or understand. Yes, they see the effects. They see and empathise with you from their perspective. It's all they can do.
It doesn't change the fact that hope of relief is only possible when you die.
So you try to live in a world without hope because you don't want to die.
And that is that.
There's an elephant on my face by Lianne Keiller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
