As I’m writing this blog post, the anesthesia from my root canal is wearing off. Needless to say, I’m in pain. A lot of pain.
This made me think about how we deal with pain.
Sometimes, if it’s bad enough, we just curl up under the covers and will ourselves to sleep until it’s over. However, too many people never have the luxury of allowing their pain to crash over them and carry them out to sea. These people – and they are usually poor people – are told to just “push through it” and “you can’t stay home with every little ache and pain.”
The implication being that if you give into pain you are weak, you are unworthy, and you are definitely not getting paid for today if you do.
Consequently, that’s how I knew now was a perfect time to get this post written. And so here we are.
Is this a sign of dedication to my craft, my blog? Of strength of character? Or of brainwashing and stupidity?
Hard to say.
So instead of whining about my own pitiful problems today I thought I’d tell you a little bit about my main character, Jake’s, tattoos.
Jake has a large slamming door tattooed on his back. It’s there so he won’t forget the night his father left forever, his mother screaming “Good riddance” at the empty air.
There’s an old coffee pot covered with spider webs on his left shoulder. It’s to remind himself of all the times five year old Jake got up at 2:30 am just to make his dad a cup of coffee when he returned from the bar.
The yellow license plate, dinged and bent at one corner, that sits below his rib cage belongs to the car that killed his mother as she was crossing Roosevelt Boulevard when he was six.
Yeah, everybody’s got pain.
How do you deal with your own pain? Do you dive in, or try to ride it out? Also, what kind of pain have you dished out to your characters? And how do they deal with it?
I’d love to hear about it in the Comments section.
Thanks for reading.
gwendalyncope.com 