Fuck The Pain Away

Main Entry: (2) quick
Function: noun
Date: before 12th century
1. quick plural : living beings 2. [probably of Scandinavian origin; akin to Old Norse kvika sensitive flesh, from kvikr living] a: a painfully sensitive spot or area of flesh (as that underlying a fingernail or toenail) b: the inmost sensibilities c: the very center of something : heart 3. archaic : life 11

Pain is an interesting thing, no? We stub our toe and the nociceptors in our foot send a message to our brain in the form of an electrical impulse, something equivalent to, "Warning, the outer perimeter of your body has been breached, pain will commence in T minus 15 milliseconds." Our brain translates that impulse into something equivalent to "GODDAMNFUCKINGSONOFABITCHSHITTHATHURT!" The funny thing is, without the nociceptors, we wouldn't know it even hurt. Stupid nociceptors...

Yeah, I know; without nociceptors, we wouldn't feel pain (coolio) and thus, wouldn't learn to avoid things that pose a serious threat to our health and welfare (blah, blah, blah). Ok, so they are necessary; they're still stupid.

Still, pain has a way of centering us that is appreciated by this mortal body, for one. When I was younger, I would sit with my school chair on my toes to help me concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing. It worked too! (Perhaps I'll test this on someone else, see if a little pain helps them focus on whatever task is at hand - oops! sidetrack and possibly TMI!)

By the time we are of any age of consequence, our bodies have become pros are swatting away physical pain - like cold or hunger, ingrown toenails and papercuts, even the occassional burn from a McDonald's coffee spilled. The nociceptors send their little message, and our brain responds, "Yeah, yeah, I'm busy, go away, I'll deal with it later." On rare occasion, someone will, say, stab the back of their hand with a steak knife in an attempt to spear a corncob for God knows WHAT reason, and then the brain interprets a little more violently. But even then, the nociceptors calm back down and the electrical impulses return to their normally scheduled program, and life goes on, etc...

Emotional pain doesn't work quite like that. Emotional pain doesn't so much center us as touch our center. It's kind of like the beam of a flashlight, one of those high-end maglights with variable focus capability that allows you to dial the beam down from a broadly disbursed illumination to a pinpoint blinding white light that picks out the tiniest emotional spider and blinds every last one of its compound eyes. Emotional pain drills down into the center of our being where all the really hefty feelings are kept, like the L words - love, lust, longing, loneliness. The F words are there as well, along with the A words. It's not so easy to brush away the pain touching these, and the illumination it brings to the center of our being is not always welcome.

And Peaches wants us to fuck the pain away. Basically, the song is encouraging us to do something about the pain - to counter it with an equally aggressive physical action.

Ok. I'm down with that. To be honest, people respond all different ways to emotional pain. Some people get angry, some get sad or depressed, some go straight to denial refusing to let their eyes travel down the path of illumination. I've tried some of each and I find that the best way to deal with emotional pain is continue sitting with the chair on my toes until I am focused on the topic at hand.

The pain is there for a reason; I won't deny my soul the opportunity to learn from a painful experience. I won't. It isn't the hurting that I should ignore. But pain is like a sonic boom that sets off car alarms up and down a street; when that electrical impulse hits our brain's interpretive center and our brain shouts out that string of obscenities, we set off ALL SORTS of alarms in that emotional center - fear, insecurity, anger, to name a few. Even if they are not appropriate or justified, they still jump up and down, waving their hands to be chosen by the light, "ME! ME! ILLUMINATE ME!"

And I am the sort of person who is inclined to generously include all those extra feelings when I am in pain. I screw with the lens and widen the beam and let the light include all sorts of things that have no bearing on anything pertinent, and the widened beam loses its intensity and the spider gets away.

I'm tired of the spider getting away.

So, my new year's resolution has nothing to do with weight or exercise (although I intend to tackle both). My new year's resolution is to feel and deal. I will follow that pinpoint beam and see what it illuminates, and when I arrive at that precise and well-lit location, I will see what I can see and do what I can do to walk from that location in a healthier frame of mind than when that pain-filled journey began.

If I'm not mistaken, I've just move The Year of the Spider up 364 days. Oh geez.

Happy New Year!