The greatest challenge of chronic pain isn't necessarily the pain, but how it warps and taints parts of you beyond your control. People who haven't experienced

The greatest challenge of chronic pain isn't necessarily the pain, but how it warps and taints parts of you beyond your control. People who haven't experienced their failure are completely unaware of the incredible mechanisms of our evolution that keep us from suicide. They're also unaware of what choosing to live means in the face of the eventual erosion of those failsafes by pain. It's like hurtling down the interstate at 70mph in heavy traffic and having the power steering go out. There's no sense of freedom and accomplishment in having to fight just to keep to your lane, only terror from all the parts of you that know how easily you'd crash if you stopped trying for even a few seconds. It's exhausting in every sense.