The Inarticulate Trace

Extreme physical pain swallows its object. It dwarfs you. I find a certain perverse comfort in being with others who have endured indescribable pain. It is a comfort of its own order, and in this sense is almost antithetical to other forms of comfort that tend toward stability. The comfort of discovering others who share the experience of indescribable pain is, oddly, one that mirrors pain’s dwarfing effect; I feel shrunken by my proximity to others who have been fundamentally altered by pain. And in the strangest sense, I relish this feeling. Though pain is internally felt and appears to