Unlabeled - by Oluwadamilola Adesina

Pain is subjective.It’s no wonder medical science, in all its advances, still cannot measure it.At 4:00 a.m., I was jerked from sleep by something that felt quite like a knife cutting through flesh—a pinpoint pain from the hardest part of the body. It traveled straight into my head, and my whole body felt its presence. Sleep fled.Hot, saline tears dropped from my adult eyes, and for a minute I imagined life as a cockroach—at least they have no teeth, therefore no toothache.I know the routine at the dental clinic. The dentist would ask, “How would you rate the pain on a scale of one to ten?”I would close my eyes to sound believable, and as “ten” almost flew from my mouth, mothers in the labour ward would think I am a joke, and the warriors in the oncology ward would say I mock their pain.Quietly and softly, I would say, “Seven.”But only I know how much pain lived in my head. The night’s sleep was snatched from me. The NSAIDs I have swallowed—because paracetamol seems to be like candy, except it’s not sweet.I’ve become used to brine—the salty fluid I use to irrigate, and the one that drops from my eyelids.The pain in my heart feels the same—only I know.It’s interesting how one person can seem to be the sun that your world orbits around, from dawn to dusk, and then—skadoosh—as the Kung Fu Panda snaps his fingers, they disappear. Not to the spirit world, but just out of your reach. And all that’s left is the bile taste of a broken friendship. Silence.The confusing moments are loudest in periods of utter silence. Self-doubt walks side by side with you as you rationalize your actions and re-read old texts—the endless questions that query your being, your worth, and why you were not enough.And the pain—the deepest—you dare not speak.For fear of being misunderstood and talked down on. The sneers that follow: “He was just your friend o.” “Shebi he didn’t ask you out.” “You get attached too quickly.”You would agree with your head, because only you can understand.It’s not a breakup. It’s not death. Notwithstanding, it’s a deep loss.It’s easy to fix a decayed tooth, and you would scream at the doctor when he pokes too much with his sharp tool.But how do you fix this ache attached to the soul? Ain’t no drug on the counter whose pharmacokinetics can address such.To talk about it? How, when sharing it makes it seem smaller—less valid—because it has no tag, no title?So you smile like you are perfectly okay—at least you can do that before your appointment with the dentist. Author’s Note: We don’t always understand what situationship cost us until they begin to ache in places we can’t name. You move through life measuring your worth through how someone chooses to treat you—an almost, but never fully. And sometimes, that becomes the version of you they leave behind.

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