Pain. The word was foreign and exhilarating on my tongue. It was something wrenchingly human, it was seeing and touching and _feeling, _where every nerve was on fire with adrenaline. It was your heart pounding hundreds of miles per hour until it shot out your chest. It was burning like firewood, whether sharp and sudden or jagged and long.

It was daggers and bullets and intricately organized bottles of poison. It was ripping yourself up internally and getting sick satisfaction in your own turmoil. It was pouring your effort and blood into someone you loved, fighting to the death to preserve that bond.

I had read so many stories about protagonists that laid down their lives for what they believed in, who experienced pain so excruciating even their souls seemed battle-worn and scarred.

It was frowned upon to do things that caused pain. It was unnecessary, irritating. What fool would ever want to do something that might hurt them?

I was the fool.

I wanted to stand on the edge of a hundred foot precipice and peer over the edge just to feel my pulse spike. I wanted to plunge my head underwater until I felt numb with cold and lack of oxygen. I wanted to feel the tip of a blade skim my skin in a sword fight, my cheeks flushed with exhaustion. I wanted agony, to feel the throbbing of bruises and headaches, the pricking of needles and knives.

I wanted to hurt. I wanted to have my heart shattered into a million pieces, because maybe that would mean I had a heart. I wanted to scream and rip out my hair, to spend hours crying into the dirt, so that maybe I could feel something. I was jaded and dull, willing to do anything to break out of the horrible grinding routine of positivity.

I lifted myself out of the window to my room, gauzy clouds masking the stars above me. I fell to the ground with a silent thud, legs slightly aching from the drop. It was just a fraction of what I would soon feel. I bolted to the wall that separated me from the world, a world that was dangerous and terrifying and _real. _

_ _ I didn’t_ _dare look back to my placid life, not for even a moment.