Origin

Where does this story begin? Does every story have a beginning, or do some just emerge out of a continuous running narrative? Or should that be narratives? Are we constantly making stories every minute of every day, or is there only the one grand narrative of the human condition, to which we all contribute? Did this particular story that I am about to tell begin when I was born, or did it begin much earlier, when my birthparents met, or when my birthmother left home to travel, or even when she was born? Or did it begin when my adoptive parents married, and no children came?

Or perhaps the story begins when I was told of my adoption, when the story that had been forming behind me, of a life written by others not myself, suddenly stopped, caught in the transition from secret to revelation?

Did the story begin when I started writing it myself?

This pain

This pain begins like a small movement in my belly. I barely notice. Then the feeling grows, and bits of it get stuck around a bone, pull insistently, make me notice. Grows some more, and then I have a hard time concentrating on what I'm doing, have to stop and take a breath. Then it grows again, and I know that I'm in for a bad couple of hours or so. It makes a run for it, enlarges into a wall, until I have to get up from my chair and take the pain and the body it inhabits for an endless walk. There is no sitting or lying down with this beast, this Thing, this mountain of lava. It will eat me unless I go inside myself and ride with it until it's seen the light of day. I must endure it, as the drug has failed. I have only myself to use against the biting, rasping saw of it.