The Domestic Terrorist - The Politics Of Pain

"NO PAIN. NO GAIN”

Recently, over several sleepless nights, I’ve been trying to understand the modus operandi of physical pain. I haven’t as yet been able to work out quite what physical pain is for. I don’t know what purpose it serves, why it exists. Obviously there’s an element of its existence which appears directed towards alerting us, as human beings, that there’s something wrong somewhere, but other than that, I have no idea.

A random scenario for you : say, for example, that you hit your toe whilst running to pick up the phone. As a result of accidentally kicking the chair, you manage to fall over in pain and shock. All well and good. It hurts, which is a good thing, because you need to attend the injury. Except, its not just the notification of pain - it sticks around for a while longer. Pain becomes some kind of perverse assault on the senses. It’s relentless, unending, a tidal wave of tedious, draining pain.

Bluntly put, pain is pointless. It solves nothing. It achieves nothing. All it does is act as a constant, unwelcome reminder that somewhere, something is wrong. Which - if you can fix that - is fine. If you can’t, all you can do is somehow get through it. Take some painkillers, grit your teeth, and lie in bed hoping that the exhaustion will outweigh the pain ratio.

Inevitably sleep hits, in fractured pieces. And after some stolen moments, you wake in the middle of the night, apropros of nothing, aware of your body throbbing like its done twelve rounds with Tyson, for no reason you can think of, scrabbling for pills and water in darkness. Inevitably then, you collapse in stolen sleep, and spend the following day feeling like death warmed up after the alarm goes off too soon and you wish you were curled inside the bed, like a second home.

It’s like the Terminator. You can’t reason with it, you can’t buy it off, it will not stop ever, unless it chooses to. And this is where the hardest lesson is learnt. Its not the fact that it cares or not, its the fact that it is completely indifferent to your feelings.

I thank God, if she exists, for giving me a completely pointless source of discomfort. Pain is that most bizarre thing, it certainly is never missed, and unlike God, if it didn’t exist, it wouldn’t be invented either.

So why do we hurt? God Only Knows. But she’s owed a lot of pain back.

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