Pain can create a focus like nothing else. However, if one must live with pain perpetually, as in central pain, there must be a constant effort to look outward, even as we take care not to deplete the energy necessary to endure.
Generally speaking, our vision does not go beyond our imagination. Imagining the experience of others is fundamental to empathy, and empathy is fundamental to a good heart.
Periodically, the person with Central Pain realizes that she has been living in a dream, as it were. The abnormal becomes so embedded as a routine, that the unthinkable becomes the standard. Then, in the vast wilderness of pain, a signpost of normality arises which reminds one how far they have come from who they are and what should characterize any human being. These are the times when the questions laid aside to permit continuation of the struggle reappear and these questions often come with a jolt.
The event may be the terminal illness of a loved one which causes one attempt to mourn with them, leading to the realiziation that the central pain prevents proper, decent mourning. It may be the smile of a child in anticipation of a response which cannot be mustered. It may be the hearing of someone expressing joy over a some matter which could not be of consequence to the person with severe central pain if her life depended on it. It may be small talk in others which is so off the topic of pain, the reality which the CP mind puts center seat, that it is annoying. This is true, even as we love ANYTHING that distracts our minds from the central pain. Yes, these attitudes are contradictory and inconsistent; but, yes, they coexist.
These are the times when one wonders
