A Day Without Pain

Five months of noise, then one clear morning where my body chooses silence.

Firth of Forth at dusk, Edinburgh in the distance. City lights breathe on the water, and a single red beacon draws a calm line through the evening, as if the body has remembered how to rest.

The last day of 2025 arrives like a quiet visitor,
and I sit with morning air still clinging to my skin,
counting yesterday from first blink to final light.

Five months of my body speaking in sharp syllables,
and then, suddenly, a full day of plain space.
Feet calm. Back calm. Legs calm. Shoulders calm.
Tension remains, a thin wire under the ribs,
yet pain stays absent, as if it takes a long exhale
and steps outside the room.

Sunday holds its spike,
a flare like weather passing through bone,
after three days of cooking, baking, stirring, arranging,
hands moving through flour and heat and family timing,
the last hosted Christmas in these rooms,
where walls hold the echo of duty fulfilled
and the soft fatigue of care given fully.

Next winter, these rooms belong to my brother’s table,
and I become a guest in a story I once carried.
Somewhere ahead, a place waits for me, unnamed,
its size, its warmth, its invitation still unfolding,
a future house whose door may open for December feet,
for voices arriving with coats and laughter,
for a visit shaped by mutual choice.

Yesterday also carries revelation,
a clean insight with roots in older ground,
and my body answers in its own honest dialect:
a day of ease,
as if understanding loosens a long-held knot
somewhere behind the heart.

I look toward the new year,
toward a final line drawn under my old life,
toward what feels excavated for now,
the hidden instructions brought into daylight,
so reactions shift,
so I stand inside my own nervous system
with a little more room to breathe.

And then the word arrives: **Geborgenheit**.
A shelter-feeling. A held-feeling.
A warmth that rises from belonging,
from being safe inside another’s steady presence,
as if the world keeps watch for a while
so my muscles release their constant listening.

I taste it in memory,
in the moment my mentor takes me in their arms,
and my tears come fast, unedited, true.
I miss a shoulder near enough to trust,
a well-meant hug,
the simple permission to soften
while someone stands sentinel at the edge of the moment.

So here, on the first morning of this last day,
I let the tears be water,
I let the body be a living calendar,
I let the ache of longing be a compass.

I carry dignity in my own hands.
I carry tenderness as a practice.
I carry this clear signal from yesterday
as a lantern into 2026,
and I walk forward, slow and willing,
making space for Geborgenheit to become
more than a visit.

---

This piece begins with a quiet fact I still can barely believe: a whole day lived inside my body, and pain never showed up. After months of constant signals, the absence felt like a new language. I keep noticing how insight can move through tissue, how truth can loosen what effort never could.

I also feel the pivot of leaving behind the version of me who always hosted, always held the room together. A duty ends. A door shifts. A new year opens, and my deepest wish has a name I still can’t translate cleanly: Geborgenheit.

So I’m asking you:

When has your body surprised you with ease, even briefly?
And if you had to name the feeling you want most in the year ahead, what word would you use, in your own language?

I am truly interested. Tell me in the comments.