Damage Without Pain

I have held for a long time to the belief that if it's not broken, you don't fix it.

My grandfather, bless his dead soul, was a big adherent of this one. His other big one was French: Laissez cet endroit aussi propre que vous aimeriez le trouver - Please leave this place as clean as you'd like to find it. That's a pretty good one. Buddhist even. Advice is mixed. Some works, some works for a short time then not at all, some should have never worked at all.

I am here to tell you that it doesn't have to hurt for it not to be working.

I have now gone through three weeks of very intens(iv)e chiropractic care. There's a lot more to do. I can feel all I have held for so long shifting around inside of me, up and down my spine, in and out of my organs. My body is holding out its strongest defenses - skin, lungs, spine; all in the form of pain. I don't know which is sadder/more compassion-arousing for me to see: that my body hurt first to avoid hurt from outside, or that I ignored that pain again and again and again, just as I ignored pain from the outside, too. All I know now is that it hurts a lot less to be present with it.

I am not here to eliminate pain. I am here to learn about suffering. Pain is inevitable; torture, at least for me, inside my own head, within my own box and bounds, isn't. This is all I know today, and I had to say it, out loud, so my body would know that I am listening.