Pain demands to be felt.

 

Augustus stepped toward him and looked down. “Feel better?” he asked. “No,” Isaac mumbled, his chest heaving. “That’s the thing about the pain,” Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. “It demands to be felt.”

Let’s talk about pain. How do you usually deal with it?

Pain could be of many forms. 

For patients with cancer, they go through physical pain that is beyond description and inevitable every day. Some people, like those people in the Support Group, face their pain positively and receive the treatments periodically with doctors’ instructions. However, pain can also be hard to aware of by people, or even neglected, which is the worst thing that could ever happen, reminding me of a drama I recently watched called Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha. There was an elder who refused to receive treatment from the dentist because she didn't want the dental implementation fee to be a burden to her son, even though she could hardly chew and her son is rich as an accountant. The dentist, whose mom is dead early owing to the neglect of her pain, told the elder, “It is parents’ responsibility to take care of themselves. You have to face the pain and resolve it as long as you can. Do not think that your pain can be troublesome to children. You’ll make children guilty if they are not able to give you the best medical support.” People tend to pretend that they are fine instead of confessing their discomfort because they deny facing their weakness and helplessness. Nevertheless, facing your weakness is an obligation. It does not necessarily mean you are worthless if you got a disease. Like what Hazel’s father told her, “You’re not a grenade. You are amazing. The joy you bring us is so much greater than the sadness we feel about your illness.” To summarize, when it comes to the unfamiliar physical pain, face it bravely, fight with it, and feel nothing terrible about it, for yourself and for people who care about you.

         As for emotional pain, it is even more complicated. In the story, Isaac, who was a mutual friend of Hazel and Augustus from the Support Group, was dumped by his girlfriend because she could not accept the fact that Isaac is about to become blind. Hence, Isaac started blaming himself with tears keep coming out of his eyes, and then he started kicking, throwing, and breaking anything in his sight. Yet, these actions did not relieve his pain, as Augustus indicated. Reflecting on ourselves, we must have some moments that we suffer from emotional pain, but we don't feel like trying to stop the wound from bleeding. Rather, we seek other distractions or ways to vent our feelings, which is like simply put a band-aid on a deep wound. The problem is that underneath the band-aid, the wound is still there. That’s what pain is like. You attempt every method to escape from the truth, but there is no denying that the wound still hurts. Maybe there is no specific way to help soothe the suffering because "pain demands to be felt."