Hurt

It was an okay weekend, overall.  Friday was all right, but at some point during the day I did end up feeling like a loser.  It was brief and my own thoughts didn’t propel me towards it, but there was a small, shining moment in which I felt berated and beaten.  I hate those moments, don’t you?  That hot sting of pure sadness that starts in your stomach and makes it way up your esophagus until you can feel the shameful bile twinging in your mouth.  That’s quickly followed by the urge to cry, but you take deep breaths and try not to speak for a second and try to make sure your voice will not be shaking when you do open your mouth again.  I described it in one of my old journal entries from two years ago as (08/06/2003): "A thousand points of light (excuse the early ’90s title).  I’m in the middle of an acute sense of pain that I cannot shake.  It starts somewhere in my chest, like a million little knives or billions of white-hot points of fire bursting, spreading outwards from there to travel all over my body.  I haven’t been able to shake this feeling since last night, so consequently I’m quite weepy and depressed."  I’m not weepy and depressed now, but the sensation was nearly identical.  It’s a sensation I hate.

Given that I’m not weepy and depressed, it’s odd that the sensation is still lingering in my memory even though I’m no longer feeling it.  When I was trying to write novels (way back in the day), I’d put my characters through a particularly cruel moment at the hands of another character, and this feeling would appear inside of me.  It’s very rare when it happens to me; it used to be caused almost only as a sympathetic reactions to my characters.  It’s such a perfect pain, sharp and unrelenting in the span of time that it appears.  The pain of the everyday is pretty dull and sometimes easily swept away–not so with this pain.  When it’s happening, you know, you breathe it unwillingly, but you rely on the fact of its short lifespan.  You can’t sweep it away; you have to let it subside.  Sometimes it takes a long while (like the August 6, 2003, one, which lasted a few days), sometimes it’s short (like Friday, it lasted maybe thirty seconds).  And as you can tell, it’s easy to remember and so strong in your book of memory.  It’s never fresh, once it subsides, but it lingers like a top-quality reproduction, on snazzy glossy paper.

I don’t know why I’m writing about it other than it’s a feeling that deserves to be explored.  It’s so extraordinary in its strength–I am a woman who flits from one emotion to the next while hardly blinking an eye, and I’m absolutely surprised by the hold of this expression of hurt.  I’m surprised by my capacity to love, but that’s such a deep pool and never brief; my flights of anger quickly flame out but are never intense enough to leave memories.  This particular type of pain, though, is so shallow and brief but lasting that it always takes away my breath.  I can remember specific instances when people made me feel like this, and even though I’m no longer angry or hurt, I can still conjure up a strong shadow of the moment.  Ow, I think to myself, do they know what they did to me umpteen years ago?

It has a certain fascination for me, this hurt.  To me, it’s the ultimate example of how much emotional pain a person can feel in an instant of humiliation, betrayal, anger or sadness.  It does make you wonder what happens when this hurt decides to stick around for more than a few days.  It almost makes you want to ask what the robot from "The Simpsons" asked:  "Why?  Why was I programmed to feel pain?"  I am not looking forward to the day when this pain decides to make itself at home for a while.