Chosen Pain

Much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Who would choose pain?
Certainly my answer is no...
but in 1997 a rotator cuff,
the misery of the injury, the surgery,
the awful triangular torture chamber
I wore for months...and my life veered,
turned toward self-care.
Then falling last year,
ambulance, emergency surgery,
a brace for months, and now
seventeen months later
through the continuing pain
I know I've grown, reached new plains,
understood more what is life,
who I am, what matters to me.
I would not have chosen mental anguish
from decades of diets, years of failure,
mountains of fat. Then I found
recovery rooms, sanity, serenity,
joy I'd never guessed could be.
Should there be more awaiting me,
requiring a trip through pain,
I'll choose that path.