Until now, I thought I could control all those little things in my life.
Until now, I did!
My spouse, my in-laws, my kids, my boss,
Ways I could control by hook or by crook.

That was, until now.

This pain,
This bloody pain,
Will not leave me alone.
Despite the vicodin, the therapy
It eludes all manner of treatment.

Despite the doctors,
Despite the therapists, and pain management
The injections and epidurals
The pain lingers;
A gnawing aching, -at times- sharp like a knife,
At other times, a slow constant reminder of my own mortality.

It defies me like no other.
It is demonic,
It charms and betrays me
Opening my darker side and my flaws
Like a crack in an otherwise flawless marble.

How could I possible see this as a friend?
As a counselor, as a teacher, as a gift?
Ridiculous!

But there you have it.
That which I cannot control
I must surrender to;
Like in battle. There comes a point when every commander must make this decision.
To surrender or lose all.

This pain makes me go to places I never wished.
It forces me to confront spaces within I'd rather leave alone.
Old wounds from childhood, memories from old traumas
There is no escape now.
I am forced to revisit all of this, my package, that which makes me ME
The good and the bad in the mirror. I wish to see only the bright side but this pain forces me to see the darker image.
Old wounds now resurface, the abuse, the violent speech, the abandonment perceived or real, it matters not now, all come crowding in with this crazy pain.
All come to pay respects like a cast of characters in a play after the final performance.

And it is in this powerlessness that I come to surrender.
An unfamiliar experience for me-the control freak.
So painful to relinquish anything to anybody since that tender age, when abandoned by the fierce demands of mother, and the failure of father to stick up for me, I made that solemn oath NEVER again to rely on anybody, anything, anyone, for my emotional health. Never again could I TRUST the outside world never to surrender.

Yet here it is I am forced on the precipice between insanity and pain
To surrender despite my oath.

To surrender my whole self-perception
That is what is being asked from me.

My illness, my pain is teaching me how to surrender.
Teaching me that I need to surrender to some Higher Power and rely on that which is beyond me. Like a prisoner I need to release all the old perceptions of self and give in to that which I have no control of.

And slowly slowly to the degree to which I surrender to this Higher Power I begin to feel a release, not more pain as I had assumed, more a release from the grip of it, from the lancinating knife going through me. And I begin to realize that healing is taking place.
Not curing for there is no cure for my pain, but the integration of my pain into something bigger than myself. The slow realization that I being held by a larger thing or archetype that allows me to hold my pain along with all the blessings in my life.

The gift of my pain, the paradoxical gift of my life in all its facets. This is what is being asked of me.