The Pain Game

Gray skies loom over New York City, on this lonely Saturday morning. This blog post is a reprieve from my latest project: I’m compiling a book index for a forthcoming publication. My editor was kind enough to shaft me with it during my only week off from teaching. Nah, it’s not so bad; I’m grateful for the opportunity, and it helps bring me back to when I used to work for her. We’ll call the happier times in my life B.N. (Before Nancy). 

Throughout this nightmare ordeal, I’ve lost a sense of who I am. My identity has been clouded, wavered, and has been a perpetual question mark for most of the year. Who will I become from here? 

Building this index teaches me patience and precision; I’m more accustomed to the latter than the former. But it’s good for me; it helps occupy my already overcrowded mind with different things. There’s no real point to this post, except to serve as an escape from reading one of the chapters in this book. It dragged on far too long, and never arrived at a point, until 3/4 of the way into the (alleged) “argument.”

Reading through this chapter, excising keywords for the index, I began playing a mental game: The pain game.

Courtesy: RTL

Which pain, apart from this chapter, would I prefer?

-Giving Nancy a call? Way more painful than this chapter

-Seeing Nancy again? Way more painful than this chapter

-Passing another kidney stone? I’d take that over this chapter and meeting Nancy

Yes, friends, one of the most excruciating pains (maybe the most excruciating pain) is passing a kidney stone. I would still rather pass one or two of these, if it meant going back one year ago and avoiding Nancy like the plague. Or, better yet, meeting her but rejecting her from the get-go. 

What pain would you prefer, given your situation/circumstance?

It’s dark fun. Now, back to the book.