If variety is the spice of life, I think pain is the seed of variety. For example, take a midnight leg cramp. The body betrays itself as muscles contract and all you can do is toss and moan and grab at your leg, squeezing it, urging the excruciation to go away.
Once, I howled silently with my teeth clenched, writhing about on my bed, wondering when the pain would cease. After two minutes of "Jesus ... Fuck ... Holy ... ughhhh ... kill me ..." and other sounds, the pain did cease. A rush of warm relief ran up my leg like I was being rescued by an army of endorphins. Soon, all I felt in my leg was tenderness and utter softness, like the past two minutes had never transpired. It was weird how spontaneously the pain disappeared. I remember that it hurt like hell, but as for the actual sensation of the hurt, the wretched up and down spiking, I couldn't remember them. In fact, I had started smiling. At 2AM in the morning, lying face-up on my bed, I felt great. I remember even feeling thankful for the muscle cramp, thankful, that I was now experiencing magical pain-relieving endorphins dancing through my leg, and spreading to the rest of my body.
During the cramp: I promise I'll drink a cup of water before I sleep from now on. I'm never going to let this happen again. I'm going to exercise. I'm going to stretch. I'm going to eat healthy. I'm going to go to sleep at a proper time.
After the cramp: That wasn't so bad. I feel kinda good.
Repeat this cycle multiple times: Get a cramp, Promise to do shit to avoid cramp, Feel good about not having cramp, Formulate and try to pursue resolutions to avoid cramp, Run out of fucks to stick to resolution, get a cramp, promise ... until what? you run out of endorphins.
So, it's probably best to get someone else to boss you around and do these things, but then your body and mind will start to question your sovereignty over yourself, and you start developing unity withdrawal. You start to gravitate toward splitting yourself into multiple personalities, and the ripping apart of your psyche in order for each personality, let's call them faces, to assert dominance over times & spaces of activity and delimit ownership of cognitive resources, is the mother of all pain.
But hey, at least you keep stretching, eating healthy, drinking cups of water.. but what if those activities are interpreted as hostile, dictatorial, directed against the way of life you're accustomed to and consequently considered as the optimal state of being, by the faces, who now control 4% of your waking state's activity, when disbanded, now unite against what remnants you are left to be and take control of your body just when you are trying to go to sleep and slowly retract control.
Flashes of a hand holding a knife, Oh Shit, it's you but how are you on autopilot? Omg, your girlfriend is sleeping and has no idea your body is in alien syndrome mode, and stab her repeatedly while the faces scream: "Take that you cunt, for depriving us of our rush-inducing cramp-pain, Bitch! NYYyahh! Nyya!h
What have you done? What will you do? Call the cops? Dig a hole a dump the body, one of the faces says. What? Who's there? It's me, idiot, the voice of reason.. dump the body goddamnit. OMG I'm insane. Sweet, sweet relief. No responsibility, no accountability. AAahhh. That wasn't so bad. I feel kinda good.
hopefully I can influence you to take cramps seriously because they can get UNBELIEVABLY bad. a few months ago I had the worst experience of cramps I've heard of in my life. I was working on a really difficult roofing side job and it was extremely hot. I also was partying the night before so I had barely eaten, barely drank, barely gotten any sleep. I've gotten cramps so many times in my life that I didn't worry about it...it hurts but it's tolerable. when I got back to the shop all the cramps hit me at once. I don't know the exact number, but I'm guessing maybe 30 or so at once all over my body. like when the muscles in my abs would cramp, it wasn't just a single muscle. I could feel like a dozen different muscles just in my core that was all cramping at once. several muscles on each arm, several muscles on each leg. simultaneously. I have a high pain tolerance but I couldn't do anything besides scream at the top of my lungs. for about 4-5 hours I couldn't move without a chain reaction of dozens of cramps so I had to just sit still. my clothes were filthy but I had so little mobility and I was afraid to move so I had someone take scissors and cut all my clothing off from my body. it was absolutely unbelievable. I had no idea you could get cramps everywhere at once.
ironically, my dad just had a really bad episode of a cramp on his thigh that was so bad that it tore the muscle and caused a gigantic bruise on his thigh maybe 16-18 inches long by 8 inch width. this actually happened earlier this week and I didn't know cramps could tear muscle and cause massive bruising.
hopefully I can influence you to take cramps seriously because they can get UNBELIEVABLY bad. a few months ago I had the worst experience of cramps I've heard of in my life. I was working on a really difficult roofing side job and it was extremely hot. I also was partying the night before so I had barely eaten, barely drank, barely gotten any sleep. I've gotten cramps so many times in my life that I didn't worry about it...it hurts but it's tolerable. when I got back to the shop all the cramps hit me at once. I don't know the exact number, but I'm guessing maybe 30 or so at once all over my body. like when the muscles in my abs would cramp, it wasn't just a single muscle. I could feel like a dozen different muscles just in my core that was all cramping at once. several muscles on each arm, several muscles on each leg. simultaneously. I have a high pain tolerance but I couldn't do anything besides scream at the top of my lungs. for about 4-5 hours I couldn't move without a chain reaction of dozens of cramps so I had to just sit still. my clothes were filthy but I had so little mobility and I was afraid to move so I had someone take scissors and cut all my clothing off from my body. it was absolutely unbelievable. I had no idea you could get cramps everywhere at once.
ironically, my dad just had a really bad episode of a cramp on his thigh that was so bad that it tore the muscle and caused a gigantic bruise on his thigh maybe 16-18 inches long by 8 inch width. this actually happened earlier this week and I didn't know cramps could tear muscle and cause massive bruising.
EPT
