Pain. It's a funny thing, isn't it? It's technically an emotion, but there's physical pain as well as emotional pain--and most of the time the two go hand in hand. I've experienced emotional pain so strong I could feel it throughout my entire body, as if I was paralyzed with pain from the inside out. But every time I'm feeling that pain I wonder to myself, 'Is this what everyone's pain feels like?' So I decided to find out. I asked over 100 people to finish the sentence, “You don’t know pain until ________” and their responses were, in one word, beautiful. Not beautiful because of the pain they had all endured, but beautiful because of the purity in each and every answer.

After the responses came flooding in I quickly realized that you can tell so much about a person by what their definition of pain is. You can tell what their personality is like, what they care about, and what kind of experiences they’ve been through. These are all of the responses I received along with the ages of the person or people who said it—organized by age so you can see how each age group’s definition of pain differs. Whether your definition of pain is getting hit in the balls, going to a friend's visitation, finishing your Chipotle, or seeing the pain in your father's eyes the day he tried to take his own life, your pain is real.

After reading through the responses you will find that pain is ambiguous; it is not and never will be the same from person to person, which is why you should never compare your pain to someone else's. Read through the responses and let each and every one affect you. Let every tragic response make you thankful; let every despairing response make you hopeful; let every humorous response make you smile. Because pain is a beautiful thing. Pain can make you laugh or make you cry, and no matter what kind of pain you go through it will always strengthen you in the end.

You don't know pain until...

• …your life changes in 100 different ways from your parents’ divorce. (16)
• …you hit your hip on the edge of a table. (18)
• …you find out the person you thought you loved doesn’t have feelings for you. (18)
• …you actually know what pain feels like. (18)
• …you’ve stepped on a Lego. (18, 20, 22)
• …you're lying on the floor in a hallway trying to convince yourself to do homework, but you just can't. (18)
• …you are diagnosed with illnesses that people don't understand and find yourself being punished for something you have no control over. (18)
• ...your heart is broken. (18)
• …the person you depended on couldn't hold you up anymore. (19)
• …your coach makes you run like there’s no tomorrow. (19)
• …you've seen it so deeply in your father’s eyes right before he tried to take his own life. (19)
• …you’ll do anything to avoid it. (19)
• …you’re sitting at your friend’s visitation. (19)
• …you do a 6 minute wall-sit. (19)
• …you lose something that makes you really happy. (19)
• …you lose something that means a lot to you. (19)
• …you've lost a loved one. (19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 55)
• …you experience the struggles of a college freshman. (19)
• …you miss somebody and can’t do anything about it. (19)
• …you can't do what you love for an entire year. (19)
• …the last time was actually the last time with someone or something. (20)
• …you've snapped off an acrylic nail trying to deadlift a new personal record. (20)
• …you hit your toe on the corner of the furniture. (20)
• …you’ve hit rock bottom. (20)
• …you’ve finished finals week. (20)
• …you have lost your best friend to suicide; at first you can't think, you can't eat, you can't have fun. The constant memories with that person flow through your head and really there isn't anything you can do about it. There isn't anything that's worse than thinking I could've saved him... nothing. (20)
• …you're staring at yourself in the mirror. (20)
• …you realize you'll never live up to the standards of society. (20)
• …to be honest, I don't really connect with the way that sentence is written. I've been through so many challenges in my life where I honestly didn't think I would make it out to see the other side-- I've thought 'this is it, I can't go on any longer,' but then you push yourself and put one foot in front of the other until the pain goes away. So, you don't know your STRENGTH until you've been there. (20)
• …you try to love someone who doesn’t love you back. (20)
• …you have truly lost someone so close to you that you don't know how to function without them. (20)
• …you’ve given birth. (20)
• …you’ve lost all sense of hope. (20)
• …you lose a family member. (20)
• …you’ve wagered a coat hanger cattle-style brand on a college basketball game, and lost. (20)
• …a Band-Aid doesn’t fix it anymore. (20)
• …you lose your best friend to something you have no control over. (20)
• …you just missed the 7 for 27 panties sale at Victoria’s Secret. (20)
• …you have been through the military. (20)
• …you’ve made your own mother cry. (20)
• …you go on a camping trip not knowing you have appendicitis and have to walk a quarter mile back to the car to make it to the nearest hospital. (20)
• …you look at people you love that are struggling and know that there's nothing you can do to make them better. (20)
• …you realize that you might not come back from this one. (20)
• …you get hit in the balls. (20)
• …I don't believe I truly know what pain is yet and I hope I don't have to find out, but I've got way too much life ahead of me to know what pain is at this point in my life. (20)
• …you've been kicked in the balls. (20)
• …you’ve taken the ACT test 9 times. (20)
• …it’s too late to prevent it. (20)
• ...a mascara covered eyelash gets stuck in your eye. (20)
• …your best friend passes away. (20)
• …you’ve racked yourself doing something stupid. (20)
• …your heroin addiction and interaction with the wrong people make you hurt and burn bridges with the people that are closest to you. (21)
• …you've gone through pre-season college soccer training. (21)
• …you’ve lost your best friend to suicide. (21)
• …you stub your pinky toe on the corner of a bed frame. (21)
• …you’ve watched the person you’ve invested so much time into decide to fall out of love with you. (21)
• …you lose something/someone because you chose to be ignorant of the future. (21)
• …you have all-white shoes and they get ruined. (21)
• …you’re betrayed by someone you trusted. (21)
• …your parents ask you to do chores after you come home from practice. (21)
• …you’ve broken 3 bones in the same arm. (21)
• …your mom tells you that the first night of your 10 year prison sentence was the first night she slept well in years. (21)
• …you lose a girlfriend to a car accident. (21)
• …you get a rib tattoo. (21)
• …you’ve been the victim of long-term bullying and abuse. (21)
• …Kevin Durant leaves the Thunder. (21)
• …you don't feel anything at all. (21)
• …you wake up one morning and are so depressed you can't get out of bed. (21)
• …You live a life of it. Our pains are often others' lives. (22)
• …you have generated a pattern of agony, originating from former experiences until it is no longer contemplative. (22)
• …you finish your Chipotle. (22)
• …pain becomes the only thing you know. (22)
• …you eat my grandma’s cooking. (22)
• …you hit your ankle on a corner of a piece of furniture. (22)
• …you’ve taken a shot to the genitals. (22)
• …you’ve been through the gas chamber at Army Basic Training. (22)
• …you love someone with Alzheimer's. (22)
• …it’s gone. (23)
• …all you can think about is the pain. (23)
• …you stub your toe on the bottom of the bed. (23)
• …you know love. (23)
• …you’re 23 and can't come up with a good answer for what real pain is. (23)
• …you've been building yourself up over and over only to keep being knocked down. (23)
• …you lose a loved one. That pain isn't just for a couple minutes like getting hit by a baseball, or a couple days like terrible sunburn, or a couple months like a broken bone. That pain will never leave your heart. Constantly being reminded of him/her in your everyday life, being reminded of what could have been, what would have been, or what was. (23)
• …You've dealt with pancreatitis and ulcerative colitis for 3 months. (24)
• …you push your body to standards of better mentally and physically improving yourself. (24)
• …something you truly love is taken away from you. (25)
• …until you feel it. (25)
• …you’ve lost a child. (30)
• …you have lost a baby. (36)
• …you witness a child realize their dreams won’t come true. (45)
• …you’ve had a gallbladder attack. (47)
• …you cause it. (50)
• …you give birth without drugs (you know, because you thought it would be cool to share in the ultimate experience of womanhood throughout the history of the world). (51)
• ...someone you love is in pain or suffering in some way, and you are helpless to make it better for them. (51)
• …you’ve gotten a vasectomy. (52)
• …your child suffers as a result of another person’s choices and you must pray with all your might that they find their own answers in their own time so there is no resentment or regrets. (52)
• …your kids are raised and you can’t get that time back. (52)