Pain ends. But not without leaving fingerprints.

Ellaeenah

When it happens, for a time it seems like the pain is everything - filling the room, searing through your body, rasping in your ear when you try to sleep. But there comes a moment (so quietly that you miss it) when the pain ends. And what follows is not what you might expect. It’s definitely not relief. It's a strange indescribable emptiness. The emptiness of acceptance - Yes, it did happen. But I’m still here.

Along with this, comes a ‘rebirth’ of sorts.

Losses, deaths, betrayals, failures, breakups: life offers many instances of pain. And each instance carries what feels like a deep finality. Even as children, we are taught that pain must be endured  - well, at least until it's over. But we have not been taught how to deal with the moment after. When the tears have stopped. When the inner screams of ‘why’ and ‘it cannot be’ are no longer demanding answers.

An oft heard cliché is ‘what doesn’t break you, makes you strong’. Pain, both, breaks us and makes us strong. But, it’s not only the hurt that shatters us, it’s what the aftermath unearths. Every instance of pain forces us to see things we’ve buried, truths we’ve denied - everything we never wanted to look at. Pain brings with it a relentless mirror. And in that confrontation, a part of us dies. A part that looked at life through the filter of ‘this happens only to others’.

And as it dies, something else emerges to take its place. The strength that you never knew you had. The strength to carry on, one day at a time. The strength to be broken but not beaten. And often, the strength to love again, even when you now know the price that must be paid for love.

Pain feels final, yes, but if we let it, pain can be a beginning as well. Pain ensures that the false falls away, and what remains is the real. The real ‘I’ that is capable of more than we know. More compassion. More depth. More gentleness. More in search of what truly matters.

There’s nothing beautiful about pain. There’s nothing pleasant. But it does pass. And when it does, we emerge with scars of victory, not signs of weakness.

And then we turn a page. And once again dare to write in the book of life.