They ask you in school what you would bring with you to a deserted island. Matches, rope, a blanket, all good answers, but none good enough to save you. The question asks what you couldn’t survive without, but the answer reveals so much more.

Every person feels pain. And everyone develops a coping mechanism. Some people burn their pain away. But fire can’t always be controlled and sometimes, a firefighter gets hurt. And the guilt of harming the person who came to the rescue only adds to the pain, and fuels the fire, until it destroys everything. Other people prefer to tie up their pain, attach it to a rock and send it to rest on the bottom of the ocean. It will be safe there they think, no one can find it, and it can’t hurt them. It is also protected though, unable to escape, and so remains as strong as it always was. One day, accidently, the person will find it again, stumble across it while they are on there way to someplace new, or while they’re visiting someplace old. And, being unprepared for it’s strength, it will overwhelm them. It will catch them, and hold them there with it, at the bottom of the ocean, until they run out of breath, and succumb to it's strength. A third group of people believe the best thing they can do is cover up their pain. They hide it from the outside world. They dig a hole deep inside them, stuff it in, and cover it up. From it’s grave, they can feel it throbbing, trying to break free. But their blanket does it’s job, it hides the pain from view. And so when it does escape, poisoning their bloodstream and spreading throughout their body, no one knows. No one can see the torture this person is going through, and no one can help them. And so although it would seem that a blanket, or a rope, or matches would help you, maybe even save your life, maybe they are just a faster way to lose. Maybe they are a way out, once you realize that there is no possible way to survive.

As for me, if I were trapped on a island, I would bring the fact that the pain will never go away. The knowledge that it is always going to hurt, and the acceptance that there is nothing I can do about it. And maybe, this way, I can continue to live, not a full life, at times a sad life, but a long life. Always feeling the pain, but never letting it harm me.