“The Pain is Unrelenting..."

“The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come--not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. So the decision-making of daily life involves not, as in normal affairs, shifting from one annoying situation to another less annoying--or from discomfort to relative comfort, or from boredom to activity--but moving from pain to pain. One does not abandon, even briefly, one’s bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.” William Styron (novelist)