Is it worth it? The question circles me like a vulture, waiting. It arrives in the moments when pain swells into something unbearable, when my body becomes a prison, when I feel like a man bound in invisible chains. Pain is not just a sensation. It is a captor. A thief. It robs me of movement, of ease, of sleep, of breath. It has been with me for as long as I can remember, wrapped around my bones, threading itself through my joints like an unwanted lover that refuses to let go.