I write this, aware that my opinion will be unpopular. But, I have faced pain enough times to know that it is, or can provide something, beautiful.

But really, I did not face it, pain. Not really. Not as an adversary. Not always.

At first, I thrashed and kicked and bit and beat away at it, and pain waited.

Pain waited for me to be quiet, and to see it, to see pain as it was.

When I did, pain still affected me; it still made itself known in my nerves and in my brain and in my heart.

But, pain no longer held me.

Probably because I stopped beating away at it. Instead, I listened. Pain and I, we began a conversation, and that conversation has not stopped since it began.

Pain is no longer a monster to me but is a piece of me, a part of me, a reflection, in a way. And, I speak to it, to her, to him, to whatever it would wish to be called, and we think, together.

And no, pain is not beautiful in itself, in the suffering. I know. I know better than many, that when you stand at eleven-years-old in front of a hospital mirror, counting up your ribs and pulling at the bags beneath your eyes, you are not thinking of beauty.

But pain can be beautiful in what it can bring out in us, and is beautiful by its definition.

Firstly, It is not the pain that kills. It is pain that saves.

Pain is simply a bearer and deliverer of ill tidings, a good and fair warning to fix something that is wrong within us.

It is always within pain, for no wound can be felt outward. All pain is an inward feeling, as all wounds are felt inward.

It is the ignorance to the warning, the incapability to respond to it, or the blatant refusal to respond to the pain, the messenger of wounds in the making, that brings about the death or suffering of someone. It is not necessarily the message itself.

Pain can be endured. The message must be endured so that the wound can be healed. Pain warns us. It feels physically, emotionally, mentally unbearable, at times. But, pain itself means no harm.

without pain, we would scar and wound and rip open, bleed and suffocate and fill with cancer, with no notice, no warning, to way to stop what will come.

Pain, really, is kind. It talks to me, and it talks to you, to help you.

That is why pain is beautiful. It means only to keep you alive, keep you safe.

Secondly, pain is beautiful in how you allow it to mold you.

When faced with impossible odds, unbearable pain, do you crumble? Or, do you fight, and let the fires of a mental and physical war harden and sharpen you into a sword capable of fighting greater battles?

We all know the kinds of challenges we must all face, and we all know that we must be prepared for the unknown. There is no better way to prepare than to fight, to endure, to learn, and to accept.

When you no longer see pain as the ultimate suffering and see it only as a warning to endure until the cure, you rise above its meaning, above its effect, and you find yourself far stronger than you were before.

I am certainly grateful for the challenges I have faced in my younger years, for now, I know that whatever battles lay ahead of me, above all and anything, I can overcome.

And you can, too, if you choose to be strong if you choose to rise above what you think will kill you. And how you rise above what you think you will kill you is to change its name.

Make the impossible possible by deciding. Just decide.

Decide to take your pain, change its meaning, let it sharpen you, your senses.

Decide to change the name of your impossible, change its name to another obstacle to leap over, another lesson gratefully learned.

And then, jump.

See, your pain doesn't have to rule you. In fact, that isn't its purpose. That isn't its meaning. It warns, it hones, it makes you aware, but it does not arrive in us to kill.

Pain, like the warning it is, tries tirelessly to keep us alive. In fact, many say that to feel pain is to be aware that you are alive. Like any good friend, pain wishes you to fix your problems, to be aware of them to fix them, so that you may life your life, and really get to living, again. And, because of this, pain is beautiful.

Because of what it can change you into, something strong, if you so choose to take its challenge, pain is beautiful. Because of what it will prepare you for, any fight, any challenge, if you so choose to overcome it, pain is beautiful.

Pain is beautiful, if you choose.

Pain is beautiful, is you see.

Pain is beautiful, if you listen.

Pain is beautiful, if you want it to be.

Pain is beautiful, and always will be, in these ways, to its old friend and trainee,

Me.