What to do with pain?

1. Write about it then throw it to the trash bin.
2. Scream at it. Curse at it until you run out of profanities to use.
3. Hug it until your arms turn sore and numb, then let it go.
4. Share it with someone. Someone who also has it or better yet, to someone who doesn't have it so they can discover how unique yours is.
5. Dress it up in various kinds of similes and metaphors and make a free verse poem about it.
6. Tweet about it, hash tag it, and interact with others in the same hash tag.
7. Paint it in shades of dreary gray and black, brooding blue and brown, then hang it on your wall of memories.
8. Take a photo of it through the reflection on others and all that remind you of it, then frame it done.
9. Bury it in a pot along with other seeds and water with your salty tears. Either it dies or grows into something beautiful or surprising.
10. Put a coin in a jar for every painful thought and feeling. Then donate the collection to charity or those who are needy.
11. Let it pulsate from your heart to your fingers and strum some tunes in your guitar. Until the pain and music collide. Until what's left is the song.
12. Kick it, stretch with it, punch it, dance with it. Add it to the pounds on your weight lifting. Anything physically demanding. Let it energize you instead of bring you down. And then shower it off.
13. Bring it to a race and let it sweat out of you, exhale out of your lungs. Race with it and then leave it at the finish line.
14. Swim, dive with it, and carve it out to the sea with each powerful stroke. Let the waves take it from you and then wash it away from you.
15. Blow all of it in a balloon and then release it to fly with the wind.

Pain still there? Let it be. It will leave once it's ready, or you will leave it once you're over it.

** back story **

someone made me cry months ago. no, someone is not my partner. a few weeks back, I woke up with a literal pain in my chest. and I know this stubborn pain is still there. alone, i tried to cope with it with it with the only way i know how, wallowing in it (for a time, because am congenitally drama queen as you already know), - writing about it.

while i was suffering, i learned that two of my friends from this blog are with their own struggles too. one broke up with a gf of several years. the other, her mom didn't survive surgery. my love and support go with them, though i can't physically hug them. this post is for them (and to all in pain) as much as it is for me.

in these past months, i became cautious, afraid of unintentionally hurting people i care for. i chose to just be mum about things, becoming a passive observer of life. and i felt weak and shriveling (imagine grapes to raisin) because of that. it took a dinner, 2 long back and forth walks along Ayala Avenue and a hug from  my very good friend K (whom i missed sorely) to give perspective of this pain. she said something to the effect that, i  should just be me. me along with my errors, lessons learned, my vulgar, mushy, asshole, emotional, tactless, caring, crazy, etc self. if you haven't stopped reading yet at this point, then maybe you are strong enough to take me and patient enough to understand me.  *group hug!* =)