Killer Pain

"Oh God, 2018 is not my year," she thinks to herself; herself being some special kind of asshole who had recently finished a M.Sc. abroad and has visited four continents over the past ten months.

Seriously, what a tool.

Solo travel is not making me bananas, but it may be heightening the bananas that I already have growing in my endless grove. Simultaneously, I have met some lovely fast friends and have also felt lost in my own head. And it's really hard to find my way back.

There's almost no way that this is real life, but it is and it is being lived. Here in Laos, I have the very real ability to earn enough money in a few hours to do literally anything I want for an entire week. It's totally rad but also makes me feel like a total joke. I can run parallel to my Lao neighbors but never with them. I'm not sure that I want to, anyway, which also makes me feel like such a piece. I've often been critical of economic divides, but now I am one.

But I also ran into a burning building with my Lao neighbors to try and save it, so I guess I'm not all sugar and entitlement. I am also ash and ember.

Everybody already knows that I don't do well with transition and unknown, so I don't need to talk about that. Instead, I want to talk about superlatives and hyperbole and pain. 

Existing online is different than existing in real life, but I try to bridge the chasm as best as I can. I don't think I would like being a social media promoter because then I'd have to add another seventeen layers of bullshit to an already bullshit-looking existence. Not only would I have to have way fewer curves (or at least have to pretend to love my curves) but I'd have to tell everyone that "I did this and so can you."

I mean, no you can't. Most of you can't. You can't because your priorities are not and have not been my priorities, and most of you fools don't know as much calculus as I do. Most of you don't have my abilities, my connections, or my freedom. 

Part of me just shook her fist at the air, lamenting "but at what cost?!?" 

She's dramatic, but she's also right. A life like this, just like any life like anything, comes at a tremendous cost. And right now in the quiet, in the midst of a schedule that isn't really a schedule, the pain is coming through. Loud and clear and oh look -- another back spasm.

My body is holding pain in my joints and I don't know whether it's holding trauma or harboring injury. My inclinations point to both. But I'm obsessed with pain right now because my internal dialogue has been using words like "always" and "unbearable" when it comes to thinking about my pain.

But it isn't unbearable. I've borne it. I am bearing it. It just can't be borne in a constant or endless sense, and my brain is quick to assign conditions like "constant" and "endless" to whatever I'm feeling in the moment. It recognizes what is unsustainable but wrongly assumes it will sustain forever, and that gets very overwhelming. 

I am hard working and lucky, and also extremely unlucky. Most people are, I suppose. For example, I spent my 28th birthday trekking in the hills of Northern Vietnam and soaking in a relaxing herbal bath in an oaken barrel and drinking rice wine made by a grandpa of the Red Dao tribe.

But I also spent my 28th birthday realizing that this would be the year that I've been holding trauma for officially half of my life and during the span of that half-life, I continue to hear that it's easier to assume survivors of violence are just lying. Safety continues to be a convenience issue, and I break under the weight of that. 

I don't want to carry it, but I also do not submit or surrender so I guess I'm stuck this way for now. I understand and realize that this is unsustainable, but ethical suicide is a logistical nightmare and I can't afford it anyway so I suppose I'll have to keep living. I'm too curious to die, anyway, but I am in enough pain.

I am in enough pain to need it to stop. 

Pain grows the more you think about it. It multiplies and transcends dimensions. Mental stress becomes physical phantom sprains. Trauma becomes a curled spine. Broken hearts become broken breaths. 

Pain demands to be felt and needs to be center stage, then the entire show. It turns rest into restlessness. It turns relationships into bargaining chips. It causes me to question whether the love in my life is genuine. It distorts reality and creates permanent exhaustion. It convinces me that this is normal and that I'm the only one who clearly doesn't know how to deal with it. Pain problems become shame problems.

And during this grand adventure, I can't really introduce myself as Becca from the US, killing time until Christmas, in pain for a living and ashamed of myself despite my good bits. Ignoring it isn't dealing with it, but I can't deal with it if I don't know what I need. I have everything that I need, but I clearly don't.

I don't want a new relationship or a new job or another place to live. I just want to stop being in pain.