winter is almost here

The cold weather makes my joints ache, and it makes me wonder what having arthritis feels like. Not how people describe it; that would be easy to look up. I wonder what it feels like. What it will feel like when I have it, because I probably will. I know that descriptions are relative. Last year when I had my accident I don't know if the pain was blinding or not because it was pitch black outside. All I know is, it hurt, and it drowned out everything else. All I know now is, the ache in my hands is a soundtrack, background music that plays dissonantly along behind the sound of the keystrokes. Just background music. I can handle it.
I read somewhere once that children don't have the vocabulary to express their emotions. Do any of us? I'm a verbal person. I've written poems that have made my friends cry. But the emotions that I feel most strongly, the ones that are threatening to make me cry right now, and succeeding, are ones that I couldn't tell you about if I tried. The only way I've come close to letting them out is on the piano, and I wish I knew more so I could do it better. But I'm too young. I don't have the vocabulary. I wonder what it will feel like if I ever do. I wonder if I'll learn before my hands are too stiff to play, before the pain gets so loud I won't be able to listen, before arthritis makes me deaf.