The Thing About Pain

 

The thing about pain is that we all feel it differently. We interpret it differently, we respond to it differently and we interact with it differently. Despite the established biological design and chemical makeup of our brains, they are as unique and different as our fingerprints.

The thing about pain is that when you’re in it long enough, you just get used to it. The uneasy feeling of being exhausted to the point you can feel your blood rushing through your brain and even your joints struggle to make your aching muscles do the simplest of tasks.You become so used to the way it feels, the all encompassing weight of discomfort that you struggle to remember a time when something on your body or in it, didn’t hurt. 

The thing about pain is that when you’re in the middle of it, you can question every life choice, every action, and even the inactions. It’s so hard to see the view when you’re stuck in the hole, and all you know to do is keep digging. 

The thing about pain is that sometimes we worry that it will never stop. We all do it, we challenge the muscle or joint off and on after an injury “just to see if it still hurts.” 

The thing about pain is that through the haze, we long for the times we took our health for granted. The mental game of bargaining for better times with wishes that sometimes go unfulfilled. 

The thing about pain is that for the most part it eventually does pass. Day in and day out, one foot in front of the other until one day we realize that our head doesn’t hurt as much, or you wake up and your ears aren’t plugged anymore, or lay down and find that feeling of blood rushing through your brain no longer makes you wince. Maybe you find that it’s easier to put your shoes on where before the muscles moved like they were dipped in molasses, slow to respond and sticky.

The thing about pain is that even after the trauma ends, the echo remains like aftershocks to the soul that rip and tear at your heart.

The thing about pain is that sometimes it doesn’t go away. Like throwing a rock into a lake, the waves it creates will eventually reach every inch of the shore, even the parts we can’t see with the naked eye. 

The thing about pain is that it isn’t always physical but maybe if it were, many of us wouldn’t walk this Earth with metaphorical gaping wounds leaving us raw, bloody and filled with grief. 

The thing about pain is that sometimes, we can heal. Which doesn’t mean that we forget the pain, we just get to a point where the wound is covered with a scar and then the scar eventually fads. 

But ultimately we are never the same.

Damage Report

2020 has been a shit year, and I make no pretense about how I wish it would just end and never come back. I also know that many of us likely have the same hostile feelings and thoughts about this year...so none of my comments are meant to detract from the pain and suffering of others, I just need to get some of these rotting thoughts out of my head before they consume me. Many of you know the recent struggles that have been impacting both my mother and myself. However, when it rains it pours...and it seems that the deluge has no end. I wish the fingers of suffering had a limited reach but sadly they do not. Here’s the damage report as of 8/6/2020 at 11:28am. 

• Mother suffered a severe TIA at the start of July which closely resembled symptoms of a stroke. I wrote about it previously so I don’t feel a need to reestablish that trauma but it’s ever present.

• Mother has since been in the hospital again, this time for a UTI so severe that she got sepsis and needed IV antibiotics. While in hospital it was discovered that she also has kidney stones. She continues to feel weak, out of sorts and mentally exhausted.

• A close family friend, who has been in my life since I was probably 15...her husband recently died due to cancer.

• Father has been needing a hip replacement but that continues to get pushed back due to heart issues. He has been diagnosed with heart failure and now is scheduled to have surgery to get a pacemaker implanted. 

• I’m struggling with my mental health, mostly because my physical health has taken a rapid turn for the shits. Despite losing about 35 pounds over the last year, I’ve been dealing with severe, unexplained back pain that nothing seems to resolve.

• I work two jobs, 6 days a week. I am thankful for the employment and benefits, yet live in a constant state of perpetual exhaustion. 

So those are the main points of life right now. Things could always be better, but they could always be worse and I am thankful for the small mercies that I am graced with on a daily basis.

With all that being said, I’m barely hanging on.

Sometimes the things that break me the hardest are the quiet whispers, the almost shed tears and the pained look in the eyes of those around me. Specifically the burden I carry at this moment is knowing my mom is grieving the loss of her youth, her health and her independence. I can see it heavy on her shoulders, weighing her down, making her question even the simplest of tasks and leaving her a broken shell of who she used to be. I know she is ill right now, there’s a lot of medical issues going on, but she has always had such high expectations for herself...I too carry that characteristic and it has unraveled some of my most cherished moments. Mom has been the sole care provider for me, and it has always been she and I battling side by side. As a single parent, she slayed every beast that haunted me, chased every bad dream from my mind and lavished my worried heart with undying love. She was and is my superhero.

So it pains me greatly when she doesn’t fly as high, doesn’t run as fast and hides from the bullets that fly about our world. I try to shield her, like she has done for me so many times, but I feel my efforts will never be enough. How do I repay the woman who gave me life? How do I make right all the wrongs she has experienced? How do I remove kryptonite from her when it takes the form of her very own blood...tainted with infection as it courses through her body? I can literally feel the sands of my mother’s life, the beating of her heart as it slips through my fingers. I’m watching her slip into an abyss that threatens to suffocate both of us...it just takes different forms. For mom the suffocating act is pulling her from what she wanted retirement to look like, the goals she had and the health that others take for granted. For me, the suffocation is in my inability to give her strength, health and hope only made worse by the fact that I can’t take this from her. I can’t make this life easier for her, and it kills me inside to feel this helpless.

If I could, I would with no hesitation give my life for my mother. I would do anything, give anything and risk anything to rectify any number of the ills that she has and continues to experience. I would give her my last breath, the beating of my heart...the flicker of any number of my brain cells if only to give her peace. Sadly desperation alone isn’t enough, because not a single of those things am I capable of doing. So here I sit, willing to do anything while the reality of life's constraints keep me wrapped in a hopeless, endless loop of incapability with a burning desire to curse the heavens. 

When I pray, for as far back as my memory can go, I have always thanked God for my mother, for our relationship, our love and her endless support. And I have always thanked God for every single moment I have with her on this Earth because the alternative is something that will literally and figuratively break my heart and soul. It is only at this moment, feeling my heart heavy with sorrow and selfishness do I question my intent…

In the moment she spoke, a cancerous worm was given life...coiling itself around my heart, constricting and biting and laying waste to my security, my hope and plans. In that moment, my thoughts for some level of normality were replaced by thorns and barbed wire fencing. Her words, still echoing in my head...bouncing and warping with every vibration...linger. “I’m so tired of feeling like this, so tired of being sick and feeling weak. I don’t think I’m going to make it to Christmas.” I wonder if she saw the moment my heart hitched and my happiness evaporated. I didn’t expect to hear it, but I did suspect she thought it. Yet, once the words were in the air being carried on wings of despair, there was nothing I could do to swat them down, only giving up once I realized they had taken up residency in my brain.

I wish I had some overly dramatic sentiment to share, some gained insight that could make us both feel better about where life has deposited us today. I feel guilty for feeling sadness, after all, I have my mother in my life on a daily basis...when there are so many others who walk this earth without one. But I can’t help how I feel, and I can’t stop the emotional tailspin that grips me when I think about trying to live my life without her as she has been. I can do nothing to change the course we are on, long ago set forth upon...the destination pre-planned, the only control we can exercise...a few pit stops and scenic routes. 

I had hoped that after writing this, I wouldn’t feel so hollow but I don’t find that to be the case. 

My heart remains heavy. 

My mind remains disorganized.

My soul remains adrift.

Today, no solace can be found and I have no choice but to live with it.

Open Letter to Jessica re: Wayhaught

Open letter to Jessica Mason, assistant editor at The Mary Sue

First and foremost, I have to admit that under normal circumstances I don’t take the bait when it comes to editorial commentaries, especially when it comes from the keyboard of an ‘ist.’ So with that being said, buckle up because I feel...no I believe that you need some education on the world we are living in. I make no pretense about your education level, socioeconomic status, or life experiences but I want to make something very clear to you, speaking from your ‘ist’ platform is counterproductive to the process. You can’t seek to further a cause by creating another divide, using terminology attached to the ideology of ‘ists’ and ‘isms’ removes all credibility to what you are trying to draw attention to. I preface my following comments because I have little desire to debate the merits of your opinion for those very reasons. 

That being said, this open letter very honestly comes from a place within me that is angry at the contradiction riddled vomit piece you penned regarding Wynonna Earp’s Wayhaught scene from Season 4, episode 2. I want to make it clear that I don’t want to challenge your views on Hollywood or that there needs to be more body positive representation on the screen. I can totally wrap my head around those topics, but the verbal diarrhea about the ‘sex’ scene that took place between Nicole and Waverly has me a little unhinged because you don’t get to represent queer culture and knock it at the same time. You said, “I know I know it’s very silly to complain about things being unrealistic on a television show full of demons and doors to the Garden of Eden and magic guns.” News flash, I see what you did there...pandering to no one in particular but trying to take up some hero mantle. You don’t get to justify wanting your reality while knocking the very reality of what makes science fiction, science fiction. It’s a show filled with oddities, dreams, nightmares and convoluted relationships that just happen to take place in a town called Purgatory. It has a magical gun, vampires, witches, and countless other weird things that make it the best damn show on television. Why on planet earth would you expect anything on this show to be “real or plausible?” Did you suddenly forget what channel it’s on or the genre it hangs in?

As for the actual ‘sex scene’...why do you have beef with the characters having relations of any kind on the stairs? Ohhh, right you said, “I’m sorry but no one actually wants to have sex on uncarpeted stairs. I don’t care how horny and nimble you are, that’s going to hurt.” Clearly you haven’t had sex on stairs...on a car...beach...fallen tree...the floor? I would hate to assume that for the mere sake that you may not be adventurous, that means that the rest of us lack creativity. I for one, would happily make love to a partner anywhere at any time if I had half the desire and passion that Waverly and Nicole have for one another. It made perfect sense that they couldn’t wait until they reached the bedroom...it made perfect sense that they made love on the floor, against the wall and on the stairs. They love each other. Time skips, revenants, monsters be damned. 

Okay, just for kicks do you know how many ‘sex’ scenes take place in non-traditional locations between those considered heterosexual? Do you? I bet you don’t, and I also bet that wasn’t something you even considered while writing this drivel. The fact of the matter is that this show changed the fabric of time for minorities...and yes there is a lot that still needs to be done. There are a million things that are left unsaid, that need to be rectified for the generations of hypocrisy and the lack of representation is everywhere but recognize it for what it is. A step in the right direction. I foot in the freaking door. You want this giant leap to prove that there has been progress, but that’s not how true, lasting and deeply rooted change starts. Do you have any idea what I would have done in my youth to have had Wayhaught on my television screen? Do you have any idea what it’s like to grow up with NO representation anywhere? Would it have been so hard for you to acknowledge the amazing truth that Emily Andras put in front of you and still made a call to continue the fight for equality? Why did you have to knock it first and put ‘unrealistic’ qualifiers on it as though saying “I like it, but it wasn’t enough so nice try.”

Seriously, if you wanted a sex scene between two women on television that “looks a bit more like the reality I know” then I hate to tell you this...take a seat and keep waiting. Let the adults sit at the table, make the plans and tear down the walls. This isn’t a place for all or nothing thinking. Battles take time, and sometimes ground is lost in an effort at gaining a larger advantage. Change doesn’t come like a bolt from the sky, it comes like a whisper in the wind. Those that love this show, found no ill design in the love scene between Waverly and Nicole, just as they did not find ill design when Wynonna and Doc had sex on the ground, amidst fallen trees and exposed roots. I’m afraid your viewpoint is too shallow for me to understand and I wish you well on your continued ‘ist’ causes but you are going to miss a plethora of opportunities wearing those rose colored glasses.

Lacking Respect,

Debra Carlsen