Pain is like the tidal wave you never saw coming. It has three stages.

1. When it hits. The water and foam crash onto your body and you're helpless, shocked, scared, and panicked. You never knew, so how could you prepare? There's still a chance to escape here, you could run back towards the shore as fast as you can to avoid the stages that follow, or if you're that vulnerable, you've just died on the spot.

2. Submersion. You're breathless and choking. All the images have blurred together and you're on the brink of tears. You're hands are desperate for someone to take you out of this miserable wave, to save you from realizing what could happen if you never reach the surface. But that hand never comes and you're left with water in your lungs and limp fingertips, a shivering spine and alert nerves, a racing heartbeat and salt in your eyes.

3. Breaking the surface. Somehow, your nose has breached the surface of the wave and your given the chance to flee. Somehow, your arms have found a hidden strength and you're riding with the wave of guilt, sorrow, realization, the wave of pain. It's helping you now. It's helping you by showing how totally ed you are even years after the break up. But is death really a break up? Maybe a permanent divorce would be more fitting. By now you've reached the stable sand and the wave spit you out like stale chewing gum. You're broken, empty, and now that the wave has hit you, enveloped you, and even released you, you're stuck with suffering from an uncontrollable, pain called, "The Not Needed Stage Four."

4. Sure, the wave has left, but has the pain? Now you're just shivering, no one wanting or willing to give you a warm towel and bring you home to nurse you back to health. Nope. Nothing. You're stuck to face the pain on your own. That's the thing about pain though, it demands to be felt.