Pain is Personal: New Ink . . .

I've been asked a lot lately about my pain levels on scale of 1-10, however, to me pain is entirely subjective and it was nearly impossible to assign numbers to vague concepts which vary from one person to another.

"Pain is personal,"

Everyone feels pain differently.  One of the hardest things about describing to others about my pain is only I know how bad the pain feels. 

The only comparison I have for pain is endometrosis, tattoos or child birth experiences.  

There's no test to show how much I'm suffering, physically or emotionally.  There's no outward sign, like a bandage or a cast. There's just pain; dull, aching, excruciating, stabbing, bearable, unbearable . . . pain

With our 5 year 'sadaversary' approaching I decided, using Sarah's portrait of me as inspiration, it was time for more ink.  Ink to tell my painful personal story of journey into motherhood . . . 
Emotional pain vs Physical pain

The outline . . . pain scale 3, tolerable, sharp, actually nothing in comparison to my journey to motherhood.  As the tattooist did his work, pain was always at the forefront of my thoughts, desperately trying to make sense of this number scale.

Putting words into numbers made for an ill-defined, fuzzy scale perspective. Detailing what the numbers meant to me may have helped track my pain more consistently, or to communicate with those who ask.  

Shading *ouch* no tears, no shaking, no swearing just lots of squirming.  Unlike childbirth I don't hit the wall of 7, very intense . . . Or the 8 of utterly horrible, wanting to give up and stop therefore childbirth is more painful than a tattoo . . . 

Finally I am able to assign numbers to distressing, intense, horrible and excruciating. 

3 tolerable, 4 distressing, 5 very distressing, 6 intense, 7 very intense, 8 utterly horrible, 9 excruciating