Pain

I am pretty sure I've praised Drew Magary of Deadspin and Kissing Suzy Kolber before, especially his work on tearing apart dissecting Peter King's MMQB piece for SI.  This description of pain, however, deserves its own posting:

Pain is a terribly lonely, isolating thing. It's like depression, only it comes armed. By definition, pain is the brain's way of letting you know something is wrong somewhere in your body. In that sense, pain is a thought. And it's a thought that, no matter how hard you try, you cannot possibly express to someone else. It's all your own. No one can know exactly what it feels like. No one else can feel it jumping in and out of various points on your body, like Nightcrawler disappearing and reappearing out of thin air. No one else knows about those times when it subsides, only to cruelly come roaring back because you somehow displeased it in some manner. Pain will occupy your every thought while it's around. You cannot think about anything else, and you cannot engage with anyone else on a meaningful level while you're suffering from it because FUCK THIS HURTS. It makes you a different person, one who is monstrously self-absorbed and all too aware of that fact. Whenever my back gives out and my leg begins screaming in pain, I always picture myself at 60 years old, too far gone for any useful treatment and condemned to spend the rest of my existence memorizing the ceiling tiles.

I've suffered a bit of pain in my life, including back pain and a month long bout of gout in both feet.  I must say, that is a great description of what pain is and how it can topple you with its cruel indifference.  Still, I prefer to read about happier things, like this.