To Feel Nothing

To Feel Nothing
By Elle Cee

I. It's the memorization that helps the most. Name, Apartment, City, State and Zipcode. Whenever the pain threatens to do me in for good as it shoots up my skull, I remember these things because I read once that it's the first thing to go when a blood vessel explodes deep inside the brain. The simple act of knowing is enough to shove the panic down so it won't kill me first. Memory is the placebo, a sugar pill not designed to get rid of the headache, but make you believe it can.

II. There was a story once in the paper of a boy who couldn't feel pain, like Labradors who won't stop eating because nothing in their body tells them "I'm full." And while this is good (who wants to feel the sting of sunburn on the skin or the shock of a broken arm?) there are no feelings for him of every nerve electrified, your heart thrumming inside its chest because of happiness. There are those things too.

III. I'd like to think there is a solution to everything; exercise for the health, Aleve for the head, honey, despite its taste, that keeps coughing from wearing your throat raw. Still, riding out the sensation of feet hitting the pavement or the tickle that can't be pressed down reminds us why we've lived here so long in the first place.

IV. The best pain requires concentration. Just grit your teeth and bear it; not like a man, but someone who can deal. The worst pain consumes; thought, time, reality, whatever---once there is nothing but 'Dear God make it stop' or the sound of your own inhuman screams, that's when you and everything else is lost.

V. Analgesia; the inability to feel pain. Reminds me of a character in a book I read once---he cared so little the point where he he had to ask his shrink "Is this wrong?" While this is an extreme example, take away our own morals and better judgment, and what do we have then? They say we repress things so they can't harm us, or kill us. Sometimes they're right.