Notes on a Type of Non-Physical Pain

It is excruciating, he thought, and thought about the word excruciating.

We get the word cross from the same place on the creased map of Latin etymology.

They both link back to torture, trouble, misery. He would say on another, less preoccupied day that Christianity embodies all of these things.

But at the moment he is not in physical pain. The excruciating thing is the waiting, which can be defined as the time spent thinking about a particular event that may or may not happen in the future; thinking about it to the exclusion of other thoughts.

A waiting man often holds his arms out to embrace what may or may not be coming. In doing so, he forms a cross.