Pain — Heal or Control

Inspired by life events.  By Adena M’lynn

What’s the difference
between healing
and controlling the pain?

See—

one looks like breathing,

the other looks like holding your breath

until your face turns blue.

One says:

Let the wound bleed,

let the scar form,

let the body remember what it survived.

The other says:

Cover it quick,

hide the blood,

swallow the hurt with another pill, another prayer, another promise.

Pain wrapped in panaceas,

wrapped in bandages too tight,

wrapped in silence that chokes more than it comforts.

Healing whispers,

This hurts now, but it will not hurt forever.

Control shouts,

This must not hurt, not now, not ever.

Healing is messy.

It stains sheets,

ruins dinners,

makes you cry in parking lots.

Control is polished.

It smiles in photographs,

pastes on affirmations,

clenches fists under tables.

And me?

I’ve tried both.

I’ve drowned the ache in pill bottles,

stuffed it down with lies,

called the covering strength

when really it was surrender.

I’ve also ripped open the sutures,

let the air sting,

let the tears baptize what I’d buried.

And sometimes,

that felt like freedom—

other times,

just another kind of hell.

But here’s what I’m learning

Control only delays the reckoning.

Healing demands it.

Control says,

Hide the wound.

Healing says,

Name it.

Control keeps you surviving.

Healing dares you to live.

So what’s the difference?

One is armor.

The other is resurrection.

And I—

I want resurrection.

Even if it means walking through fire,

even if it means bleeding in the open,

even if it means saying out loud:

“This is pain, and I heal the pain.”

Because I don’t just want to control it.

I want to be free.