I Will Bring Pain Unto Myself

That's the real trouble with this disease.  It pulls at you and stretches you and compresses you to the point of simultaneous implosion and explosion.  It vibrates and chimes in your head and reverberates through your body.  This pain should not be dismissed- seen as less than for being "non-life threatening"-- it is life threatening in so many ways.

For the first time all year, I noticed that the stairways in the University are suicide-proof-- crowded together so that there is no place to jump from.  All of the windows opening just a crack.  No roof access.  Low speed limits.  I can feel them trying to protect me from myself.

Yet, it is the controlled pain that is more beguiling than the possibility of complete release.  I find bruises on myself, press them to bring about the weak hurt, remove my hand, then press again.  Such a feeling of power.  I am the master of my own pain.

This is not enough- I want more bruises, more scabs, more blisters on my feet.  I wear shoes that are painful but forget so quickly the hurt.  I pick at my head until it bleeds then pick the healing wounds.  I have started hitting my arms when the pain, the real pain, gets too hard to understand.  I want my arms to become a visiblization of my hurt.

Today, I wore a new kind of heat pad all day.  It hurt for a few minutes, but then I forgot all about it, except the warmth.  When I removed it after returning home from work, I found deep burns all along my neck.  The heat pad literally burnt away layers of flesh on my neck and I didn't notice at all. 

Part of me is terrified.  I have become some sort of sideshow spectacle.  A human pincushion of sorts.  It can't be normal to simply not notice pain-- it must have hurt.  I notice is now and it hurts, but not really.  It just doesn't compare.

Part of me is proud.  I've been told that I've build up a tolerance to pain.  I can bear so much "regular pain" in comparison to the real pain that debilitates.  Why would this be something to feel proud about?  Perhaps it is simply me trying to be positive.

 I will need to consider this further.