Pain is in the mind

I am afraid of pain. I imagine most of us are.

Pain, of course, serves an important purpose in our existence. Broadly, pain is a communication tool our bodies use when something isn’t right. A headache after drinking 3 cups of coffee in a row and no water is your body telling you it’s time to hydrate. Aching feet after 20,000 steps and 20 slides at a water park is your body telling you it’s fatigued and you need to rest. A sore lower back after a long day at work is your body telling you it needs a walk, stretch, and perhaps some form of core exercise to reduce strain. A sore throat and a headache after being outside in terrible air quality during an especially bad fire season in Colorado is your body telling you it needs clean air to breathe, not smoke.

I don’t fear everyday pains. I have grown to respect my body enough to listen to her when she’s telling me what she needs. I have developed routines over the years to keep her happy and functioning as best as she can be. I drink lots of water, eat mostly balanced meals, limit my alcohol consumption, and am a religious exerciser and stretcher. I view these habits as a kindness to my body. She’s a kaleidoscopic amalgamation of evolutionary pressures and leftover structures and genetic scrapbooks that mother nature was too sentimental to get rid of.

There is no such thing as a peak of evolution, by the way. There are only branches on the tree of life, and each branch is riddled with leftovers from its history and cobbled-together structures where it made the best of what it had. (fn: i’m talking about vestigial structures and unused DNA here. everyone’s got em!)

Everyday pains are always present and are manageable. I fear unavoidable, terrible pain.

I had to experience that same intensity of pain this week for a biopsy. The pain was present for about 5-7 harrowing seconds and wrenched sobs from my unwilling, already embarrassed self. The pain was not there for nearly as long as it was this week as it was when my shoulder incident happened a few years ago.

My body remembered, though. She, just like every other human body, writes these experiences in permanent ink on walls I can’t always find. They just reveal themselves every so often.

I hate having to walk clear-eyed into painful experiences like this biopsy and immediately having to fight tooth and fucking nail against the part of me that remembers just how horrifying pain can become, and will do anything to keep me from being there again.

I don’t know. Sometimes we have to do things that make us feel like an exposed nerve, and we don’t have another choice. I wish there was a better way.