Sick Stuff

Sometimes I find myself blindsided by a memory or thought or feeling from the past that leaves a bad taste in my mouth…like some kind of red-hot, ashy eruption spewing from my core and burning me from the inside out. I admit, I hold on to hurt for an impressive - or depressing - span of time. Taking the winding, overgrown, least-travelled road to recovery seems to be the way I usually go. Holding on to hurt isn’t simply my preference…I hold on to what I think I am justified to feel. I’m holding on because I “own” my pain and I “owe” its expression in the way it so decides to manifest in my life. Or so I believed. Pain is that familiar experience that lends itself to me at a moment’s notice. I never have to ask Pain to show up, because it’s always sitting on the sidelines anticipating the moment I’m most likely to confide in its predictability. I always feel safer when I know what to expect, and Pain has got to be the most consistent by-product of being human. So strange is the safety I find in the stinging blow of Pain painting my thin, alabaster skin in purple and grey shades all over again. It’s never failed me yet.

While I think it’s largely false, there might be a sliver of truth in the saying that “Time heals all wounds”-because I’m not so angry now. I’m not blinded completely by the intensity of my pain, and I’m finally truly finding joy that I haven’t felt in so long. But at times I feel myself momentarily pulled back into the fog of hopelessness I felt at being so exceptionally misunderstood and helpless to explain, and pointlessly debating with the figments in my head of past interactions with people who I’m sure barely remember I exist on a daily basis.

Me, an intellectual: