The Pain we Don’t Survive by Clara Jack

The pain we don’t survive
There is pain we perform
The one we dress up nice enough for everyone to see
There’s pain we gauge we can take
So we take that one and hold it
So that we don’t swap it for a new one
There’s pain we know, pain that we can trust because it’s familiar
Sometimes we even preempt it and then sabotage until we get the same results
But there’s pain in its true form
Unexpected, jarring
Pain that causes you to face a small death of yourself
A death you were afraid of happening
Happens
but we are bigger than our biggest wounds,
Even death scars
So if we can fall into the death gracefully,
We can come out on the other side
If you surrender to the pain we don’t survive
Relax your shoulder and open your ducts
We can see that beyond survival, there is living
Not surviving the pain eases us into the joy we deserve to live in.
Let the pain scatter you, untether you.
Trust yourself that you will build yourself back up, brick by brick.
Our beings are our primary homes and as places, we are worth returning to after the pain, the loss, the war.
Let the pain kill you so you can go home