There are wet pains. That of a bone edema after an operation of the knee triad, for example. Burning, burning pains like herpes (terrible zoster). Throbbing or intermittent pain and static pain, obstinate in attacking a single point. Pum, pum, pum… like the Malaysian boot.
There are also sharp ones, oh!, like a knife. There are oppressive ones, that twist your diaphragm to steal your air. There are irradiating ones, which start, what do I know, in the upper part of the back and go down mercilessly to the elbow. And usually, the pains come and go, but there are also desperately chronic ones. They are real pains or pains thought, imagined. Sometimes there are even phantom pains from amputated parts that do not want to forget that one day they existed.
Each pain is different. There are no scales to measure it. Does it hurt a lot or a little? On a scale of one to ten? And if your ten is mine one?
The worst of pains? The empty pain It is that pain of “when a friend leaves” internationalized by Cortez, which Shakira disguises as a sung tantrum. As much as women no longer cry, that pain, the emptiness (whether you are the one who leaves him or the one left, or, worse, when you have to say goodbye forever, but always always, to someone who was essential to you) feels angry in the chest. In the middle. There in that point of the dagger that is the xiphoid, which, in cases of extreme grief, recedes until the sadness is hidden behind your lungs.
But to that pain, oh!, you have to look at its face. Make emptiness empty. All pain is a duel. A rupture that there is no drug, neither for the posh, nor for the poor, to cure. Pink cocaine won’t dilute it. Not even the Yankee fentanyl gummies that roam our streets. Not even the most ravalero shabú. Nor the limited cannabis fun in Amsterdam that now floods Barcelona (we are so cool!). Not the alcohol. Self medicate…
You have to take that pain by the tail, oh! to “never think about death/ and let the afternoons go by/ looking at the sunset./ See the whole sea in front of you/ and not be sad for anything / while the sun regrets it./ And die suddenly / the least expected day. / The one I always think about” that Mayte Martín sings to Manuel Alcántara. That heals. And stop taking drugs.
