I have hurt myself a lot.
I am clumsy.
I deal all right with the pain of an instantaneous fracture, or cutting myself on a broken bottle. But last week something happened that drove me insane.
I got a headache. Again, this is not new. But this was the worst headache I think I have ever had. It accompanied some sort of flu and made me so sick to my stomach, so intensely uncomfortable that I could not sleep, eat, or even think.
I have never felt something like this before. It took the hospital, some IV's, and both narcotic and non narcotic pain killers to make it possible for me to relax enough to sleep.
That being said, on the other side of it all there are some realizations. And that is that torture works.
I would have literally done anything to make the pain stop. If someone had of told me that cutting off my hand would ease the pain, I probably would. I did not think about anything. Seriously I thought about nothing but ending the pain.
Right before the hospital I had decided that I should shoot myself and end the pain.
Kurt Cobain reportedly did just that.
I think we underestimate what true pain is. I am never going to think about torture, or about people who suffer from chronic pain in the same way ever again. Because we may think we are tough, resolute, and in control. But I know it does not take very much to tip the balance.
I guess it is a sort of "there but for the grace of God" realization for me. Since I have had pain before, from sore muscles through broken bones, even migraines and surgeries, I thought I understood what pain was. And I totally felt that people are wimps.
No more.
