Cornucopia of Pain
A (somewhat) poetic description of power sprung from pain
With English as my second language, I never set foot in the world of poetry (or creative writing, for that matter) until I was forced to start writing for my college liberal arts core. The small, close-knit college setting brought many brilliant writer friends into my circle — believe it or not, just at 17 years old, with those very friends, I was lucky to have had late-night conversations about topics ranging from what life could be after college and what politics meant for our generation, to if the professor teaching Intro Biology would bring her pet reptile to class next week. When it was still the simpler times, we’d spend hours sitting and talking at our Student Union over the $2 hot chocolates from the snack bar. Truly the good times.
Fast forward to earlier in 2018, right after my graduation from college, I had surgery to remove Tory, a benign teratoma on one of my ovaries that I named after the phonetics of ‘teratoma.’ She was first found in April when I visited the ER due to some unexplained lower abdominal pain. Being a teratoma, Tory was also known as a dermoid cyst, being made up of different tissues like teeth, bone, and hair. I was leading quite an unhealthy lifestyle at the time with all the senioritis and post-grad stress coming at me, so something like Tory was probably well within my future. The doctors were worried that Tory would rotate or rupture (thus ruining the ovary where it was situated,) so they force-booked me a surgery. The surgery wasn’t big, but I still had to go under general anesthesia. My parents helped me check into the hospital two days before the surgery for extensive testing and the pre-op shenanigans, and I was placed amongst women recovering from much more serious procedures. The woman next to me had just had an abortion, and even with morphine she would still wake up moaning and crying from agony, I was guessing both the emotional and the physical kinds. Emotions are contagious, so I also became anxious. I wanted to give that woman a hug, but I couldn’t. Her partner was there throughout the nights, and I could see the suffering in his eyes.
I’d like to see the best in all situations, albeit it seeming like the end of the tunnel is still thousands of miles away. Naturally, I turned to writing. There is this saying by Mencius:
天将降大任于斯人也，必先苦其心志，劳其筋骨，饿其体肤，空乏其身。
If one were to be bestowed with great responsibilities, one must be crucified with trials and tribulations so as to break their will; with great physical exhaustion so as to break their flesh and bones; and with starvation and poverty so as to frustrate their spirits.
I’d like to think that that woman was going through that phase. I’d like to think that I was, too. We both would have something better in store for us and find our resolves after the hardships. Then this poem came to be.
Words still escape my mind at times. My sentences can still get convoluted. In creation of this poem, I’ve spent countless hours checking the dictionary so that I got every word in the right context and meaning. Enjoy nonetheless —
From the rickety bones of my lower back…
my corrupted combustible appendix…
and anaerobically challenged lungs…
where was it not…that my body’s pain did not emanate from as a child? As if spawned by a Greek tragedy, I wondered had I been afflicted by the higher beings for the sins I unconsciously caused mankind by my birth…or was I being challenged by a test from the same to command forward the strength of my determination to succeed…in preparation for future leadership?
For most of my childhood I faced excruciating pains,
from my bones to my lungs and even suffered from uncooperative veins.
There was the pricking, the prodding,
and sitting in a patient’s chair — -sickly nodding.
Then the mystical hypnotic drip…
of a mysterious intravenous and concomitant EKG blip.
For many days…and many years of my life,
in the hospital sat the helpless, the tearing… conflicted by medical strife.
What could we do, we all thought to ourselves,
If, it all ended tomorrow would we be going to heaven, Hades…or somewhere else.
After all, we were medical patients donned in hospital
frocks of despair,
Surrounded by a mixture of sanitized scent and the smell of death around us everywhere.
Crushing my tears of pain with my eyes closed,
I prayed to a God I did not know.
I also prayed for the patients around me,
So that they may be healed…and be returned to their loving families.
But year-after-year due to death the hospital was increasingly empty,
filled with the crying…as I looked on with heartfelt pity.
I had lived…I had survived…
But pyrrhically failed,
because my prayers did not keep the other lives from being curtailed.
From our pain, suffering…helplessness I saw my destiny,
My beginning, my second birth…and a spiritual epiphany….
I have faith in human beings’ ability to survive earthly afflictions,
I believe we were put on this earth with the same ten fingers and limbs…regardless of our differences.
When it comes to healing the afflicted of the world, there is one incontrovertible fact…
There can never be too many prayers or positive thinking to aid in this quest.
Whether it is a symbiosis of prayer and medicine or of positive thoughts and medicine,
after faith, hard work must be done to bring to this darkness of human suffering
the light of healing and good riddance of this cornucopia of pain…
that I know all too well within…
