there's a three days grace song called pain.

i cannot believe sometimes, just how much of my life is ruled around conversations of illness, of medicine. of doctors, of relatives who are doctors, of relatives who can refer you to doctors, of this mysterious lymph node infection or this sinking suspicion that what is about to set in is an usher-in for the worst depressive episode of my life, of illegally refilled prescriptions, of "hey, i think i need to get an eye test", of pain. of pain, always of pain. 

i'm not entirely sure when i started noticing it. perhaps three years ago, when my parents and i fell dramatically, weepingly ill a few weeks after moving countries. first me, then my dad and finally, my mother. the pattern again, followed a few months later after a short domestic flight. a sudden, ravaging cold that took me hostage first, then briefly my dad, before spitting the both of us out and taking my mother. which ate away at her until there was very little, until there was the sudden need to go to new sorts of doctors and get new sorts of tests and new sorts of scans. new sorts of conversations to be had. this delicate tone that started lacing between all of our words. phrases blunted and jokes slightly more offbeat. it dripped between our conversations quick, until it has become all we really have now. 

i can't remember the last time i spoke to someone without some sort of illness becoming the main topic of conversation for a good amount of time. but i've been the perpetrator most of the time as well. a year ago, i fractured my ankle so severely that it still hurts to various degrees every second i'm conscious. it's a different beast each day. some days, it's a mewling kitten who can be put to sleep with a little warmth. other days, it's the wingbeat of a hummingbird. pulsing and persistent. a few times, it's skittish like a deer. if i look for it i can spot it, but i wander carelessly otherwise. but it is always there, and i like to think a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved. so i let it slip sometimes, through reticent confessions. "hey, can we slow down a bit? the ankle, yknow." "sorry if i take a little longer today, i think i rested my ankle weirdly while i slept." all this posturing and professing to mold this pain into something digestible. but it comes at the cost of having to mention it, thus falling into the trapdoor of being the perpetrator. 

i love it, in a lot of ways. the fact that you need to trust the other person in some degree at the least to be able to divulge medical details to. so the people in my immediate circle trust me, here is irrefutable proof i can hold to glean some warmth from. nobody warns you about that- how being in pain all the time leaves you cold and stiff, so you leech all the warmth you can from people now. and once again, that trapdoor. 

but i yearn for when i could spend days on end unaware of the existence of hospitals. of when the next appointment is scheduled. of knowing which pills are taken at morning and at night. when all that mattered to me was what book my dad was reading every evening in his white armchair, and what new songs i would download on my pink ipod nano. we had our fevers and we had our ills, we had our mournful long-distance calls, and my psychiatrist's number favorited. i am aware that the sicknesses of back then were not gauzy. they were always just as bad as they seem now. perhaps, i had a less developed sense of the perennial flow of time. maybe, i was more practiced at looking past the wretchedness of it. but whatever it was, i don't have that safeguard anymore. this change feels permanent, to the point where calling it a change is overdue, it is just routine. 

last year, on my second day of having a freshly fractured ankle, i found it impossibly hard to use crutches to hop any distance longer than 10 meters. through various funny events, i acquired a wheelchair that afternoon. it took some time but i adjusted to it after a bit. sooner rather than later, it almost seemed like it belonged there. there was irrefutable proof of my pain that i gazed at every second, that there was more than one thing broken here now. but maybe that is when i truly did start noticing it. conversations had become only morose affairs keeping each other up on each of our respective hurts and sicks. everything centers around what is wrong with me. around the people around me. i package it all up in the end with a neat little bow and tuck it away for next time. meanwhile, i try to notice when each sentence out of my mouth isn't rooted in desperate conviction. we'll be okay. of course, it'll work. you look well today! it's okay, it's absolutely okay. 

i often play around the idea with what would constitute as solid enough penance in the eyes of god in this time and age to grant me with a wish. the whiplash of horror of getting your phone stolen? the avalanche of tax season fluffing up your mailbox? the deluge of spit and insult and pain? if i manage to leech all the pain out for the people around me, would that end it all? would that help the pill go down smoother?