Queen of Suffering

"Find the One everywhere and in everything,

and there will be an end to pain and suffering.." 

I’m not the tallest fellow around, but I am taller than most of the men I know. Even tall women, by ordinary accounts, are usually an inch or two below me, and very rarely do I encounter one that surpasses me in height…which is why I was rendered somewhat speechless when I was introduced to the woman. At six foot six and in heels she towered over me, hips nearly level with my chest, extending her long angelic fingers down to me from above with intelligent eyes and a polite smile. Elegant, remarkably dressed, and slender, she bore the attitude of a woman who was well used to capturing the attention of everyone in the room when she entered…cold, unapproachable, and interested only in those that she herself personally sought out for company or conversation.

There is no escape from suffering in this world. When the body suffers the soul flourishes, but when the body flourishes, or at least maintains stagnant satisfaction, the soul lies in anguish. Over the years this long woman and I accidentally fell together as kindred spirits, never of the romantic variety, but rather as siblings far removed by space and blood…and as such she confided in me, with tales of the most unfathomable torture I have ever heard out of another. This graceful, beautiful, seemingly comic-book-drawn woman, was actually no more than a shiny apple who’s insides were black and teeming with worms. Beyond thirteen accounts of various cancers, extensive nerve damage, mysterious flesh eating diseases contracted in south america, and a condition which renders her skin, lovely to the eyes, as coarse as sand paper to the touch, her experiences alone would be enough to crush lesser women. Before marrying (and eventually divorcing) an abusive, possessive, and homicidal sociopath, she had spent her teen years in south america, working with under developed children. One child in particular, she recounts, was her favorite…until the orphanage she worked at came under attack by a group of militants, who ordered her to remove her clothing. She refused. They executed the child before her eyes, and removed her clothing for her as she crumpled into hysterics, each man taking turns holding her down while the rest had their way with her.

Such luck usually falls upon people and snaps them instantly in half, rendering them incapable of normalcy in any regard, and plaguing them with a host of untreatable psychological disorders. But this remarkable woman, somehow, glides around through life in her heels, genuinely happy and appreciative of even the smallest thing, as I often tend to be. She stands as an inversion to they kind of suffering I more often than not experience and percieve, but her perpetual physical pain has been her soul’s salvation, and on every fleeting chance that I find myself with her, I stand in awe and appreciation.