I painted all your pigeons red, I wish I had stayed home instead

It's a funny thing, pain. Everyone has some. Everyone knows some. Spend enough time with the happiest soul on earth, and there will be something, some spot in them, somewhere...on the surface or buried deep...where the skin is thin and tender. Some little wincing spot they likely don't even consider of a day...of a week...of a year.

But sometimes, even if it's just sometimes...they know it. Some dark night they'll feel it. They'll turn and curl and pray for morning, so they can go back to being happy, and forget they were in pain. Pain happens, and it happens to everyone.

For those of us who have more than our fair share, we learn to adapt around it. Some pain can be ignored, dealt with later, dealt with alone, poured into other outlets. Some can't. Some pain, certain pain, will be the shadow in our eyes forever.

This isn't always a bad thing. Pain gives perspective. Pain, if properly understood, can be treated as a tool, a guideline for all our steps. Pain can teach us, if we let it, if we don't let it overwhelm us, if we don't let it make us bitter. If we keep turning towards the world, instead of away from it, it will speak to us, if we know how and when to listen.

On the other hand...

I've said more than once, to more than one person, that I have an almost primal loyalty. My friends have become intimates, in some cases; my intimates have become family, if only in my own head. Scratch my loves and I bleed, I've said that too. And if the world injures them, and I cannot help, it makes me slightly unhinged.

I'm breathing through this one. All my impulses are wrong in this, and I am listening, I am listening very carefully to my own pain, and trying to see my way clear for what to do next. I may end up twitching and biting my nails down to the elbow, but I will stay focused, I will keep listening, as long as I can.

Because there are problems that cannot be solved with bubbly distractions. There are problems that cannot be cured by distraction. And there is pain that cannot be addressed by wrapping the injured up and conveying them far, far away. I know this. I hear this. I know it's right.



In the meantime, I create. Twelve new eyes for the Hallows set and one more--at least--to come, before I package them up for sale. I'm contemplating creating one (or more) as a giveaway for the parcel haunt--not the one in Rivula, the one in Morgaine. Then I just have to remember to tell Miss Looming that we'd like to be on her list.

And try not to worry so much.

And try to sleep. Because I'm no good to anyone I'm worrying over if I don't sleep.

And remember to breathe. Time heals most things, after all. Pain lessens, most of the time. Care, and time, and the listening ear. Everything else is...everything else. Not essential.

Pain has that way about it, too. Distillation of resolve. Carving away all that's not vital, from all that is.

It's a good thing to remember.