Shades of Pain

It's hard to classify pain. I told the dentist that my tooth hurt and he asked me if it was a sharp pain or a dull ache. I said both. He asked how much it hurt on a scale of 1 to 10. I said sometimes 7, sometimes 3. Honestly, I don't know how to classify pain. Childbirth was pretty painful. Pulling my peroneal tendons was pretty painful, too, but not in the same way. There is some pain that hits hard, then subsides quickly. Other times, it gradually builds until you are suddenly aware that you've been clenching your teeth to keep it at bay. Sometimes you can identify immediately and accurately where the pain is coming from and other times, the pain travels and you never know where it will hit next.

Emotional pain is similar. It's easy to inflict pain. You don't want to, but you do anyway. Or, maybe you want to and that's why you do it. Sometimes you attack with weapons that you know will strike hard. But, sometimes you use weapons that cause a prickly kind of pain.

I think it's easier to see the fault in hard strikes - whether they are intentional or not. When the pain is obvious, both parties know - and suffer.

It's harder when the attacks are nit-picky. Sometimes neither party knows what's happening until one person has a chronic ache. Sometimes the offender can't see how they are inflicting pain on the other.

Stabbing pain from a wound inflicted hard and swift or pin pricks that drain your essence and energy? Which would you rather have?