I grew up listening to cassettes on long car rides.

They would flow in and out of existence, trying to fill the silence between the short conversations about holding the map right.

And as I looked out the window, I would always hear them droning on and on about the same thing: heartbreak.

Heartache.

Pain.

I remember thinking “How arduous. Everyone is so depressed”. Pain, however, doesn’t always have to be so exhausting and draining. Pain could be your strength.

Your superpower.

And looking back on my past, my pain pushed me farther than I’ve ever expected myself to go. My pain pushed me to be a better person mentally, emotionally, and physically.

At the end of my sophomore year of high school, I got diagnosed with a condition called Sciatica. It’s when your main motor nerve (you know, the one that makes you move and stuff) gets smushed somewhere at the bottom of your spine. Basically, I could barely move. My right leg was going through such an intense pain that I couldn’t even sit up straight. The first day I got it was the morning of a weekend so I spend my weekend crying and staying in bed since I couldn’t get up.

And Monday morning, I had school. So off I went, dry eyes and white knuckles climbing up crowded high school stairwells.

Pure agony, but I did it with a smile on my face.

After a long two months of continuous therapy, my pain went down by a lot.

However, I was a marching band student. So, once I started waking up at 6 in the morning for rehearsal again, my sciatica started waking up too. Before I knew it, my condition was back in full force. Except round two came packed with a punch I had never felt before.

This time, the pain was terrorizing. Patches on my leg felt like they were buzzing. Almost like that grey TV static you saw on channel three as a child when the antenna wasn’t working.

Other patches felt like a chainsaw to the bone. All at once. Pure chaos. I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t sit. I would feel so out of breath from the pain that I would feel dizzy. From simply hurting.

Round two got me. It got me good.

I never let my sciatica get the best of me, though. I would fight. I would push harder. And because of my pain, I felt unstoppable. What I went through was something I survived and if could get through that, I could get through anything. Pain should never be able to weigh you down or make you cold-hearted.

You should never turn your back on pain, but rather embrace it. Befriend it. Don’t be afraid of it. Just like those songs I heard growing up, pain happens to all of us. Some more than others. Losing a best friend, breaking up with a significant other, getting fired — these are all painful events in their own ways.

But these are all experiences we can learn and grow from, We can be powerful when we understand how our weaknesses make us stronger. I still live with my sciatica today but I can handle so much more — with my body and with my life.

You just have to take one stride at a time.