The Loss - Date Unknown

It hurts in all the right ways.
A sign that things are still working and in the right places.
It has become too easy to misplace the important things, and it has become the first step towards losing ourselves in this. The pain eventually ends up where you least expect, it ends up in parts of you that weren’t meant to bear it.  These days pain is one of the few things we have left in abundance. One of the only things that reminds us of how real this is. Our dependence on feedback can be a curse, and sometimes it makes it too easy to lose yourself in the new death.
It takes something sharp to snap me out of it.
Something to remind me I’m still alive.
Something to remind me of what that even means.
The pain I can live with because I find the utility in it.
I build it into a compass, one that always stays true to a pure north.
Out here, you need that kind of direction.
Because I’ve seen good men lose their way, let the burden twist them down the road with an end I care not to share.
That’s why I never follow.
I never stray.
I never second guess.
I trust pains stinging whisper because it has never lied to me.
You can be like them and let yourself hear what you want to hear.
You can try to fool yourself.
You can let its sting strike you in the wrong place.
You can let its message be lost.
But no doubt.
You will be too.