nightmarechaser

Is This Beautiful?

People say that pain is beauty. That to suffer is to grow and to break is to be remade. They say that to hurt means you are alive for life is pain and life is beauty and therefore pain is beauty, you must simply find the beauty in pain.

They say that pain is beauty, and all I can think is you have never seen pain. I think, you have never watched a friend cry. I think, you have never had a friend message you with a knife in their hands, trying to say goodbye. You have never had a friend beaten down by the world until they have to come begging for a reason to continue, to live, because they cannot see an end to the pain except for one they make for themselves. I think, you have never had to call an ambulance because you couldn’t give them a good enough reason, praying that you were not too late.

They say pain is beauty and I think, you have never stared at your ceiling at three in the morning, wondering when it would all come crashing down on you. I think, you have never looked at your bottle of medication and calculated how many pills you would need to never wake up. I think, you have never felt a nothingness so profound and so deep that anger and tears and blood was preferable. You have never traced lines across your wrist in pen and in paint, wondering how it might be with a blade.

They say pain is beauty and I think, you have never cried. You have never gasped for air around sobs and snot and spit while tears ran down your face. You have never looked in the mirror through blurry, puffy, flooded eyes and seen your face red and blotchy and wet. You have never looked your sorrow in the eyes and felt disgusted in yourself, angrily trying to wipe away saltwater so as to be able to see.

They say pain is beauty and I think of starving children, their ribs visible through their skin, tiny skeletons. I think of concentration camps, stolen people given numbers instead of names and chambers full of gas that would make graves. I think of war, gunshots and fear and soldiers who never made it back home. I think of disease, bubonic plague and gangrene, infected wounds and limbs rotting while they were still attached, hospitals full of the smell of antiseptic and the moans of the injured and the groans of the dying.

They say to find beauty in the pain and I think, you have never had to search. You have never torn yourself further to find raw pieces to offer to the world in the hopes of approval. You have never rubbed salt into your own wounds in a desperate attempt to make this beautiful, to make you beautiful.

They say pain is beauty and I call them liars for pain is an ugly thing.

I think of a city ruined by a nuclear bomb, now overgrown with plants, where an old man lives amongst the radiation so as to feed the animals. I think of waking up and realising that I want to be alive. I think of scars, now old and faded. I think of triumphant first steps and I think of they're safe. I think of laughter and I think of songs and I think there is no beauty in pain, but in healing.