Pain wrapped in human skin

Earlier today I watched a video log by a scientist I have followed for a while. In it he described how after a long struggle his father had finally succumbed to the cancer he had been diagnosed with many months earlier. He detailed how it had affected him, even traumatised him in some ways, but also inspired him to learn more about cancer and how to defeat it. It was a pretty heart-rending video to watch and I found myself very much in tears by the end of it. The raw pain felt in his words truly resonated within me.

This pain is what I'm feeling so strongly inside of me, even more so when stressful situations bring it to the surface, such as most recently due to my own medical complications and cancer scare. Especially the past weeks I have noticed just how strongly it affects me. In some ways it makes me into a person I can appreciate, someone who is more productive due to being focused on distractions like projects, yet on the other hand it also turns me into a complete emotional wreck.

When I feel so much emotional pain an instinctual response which has been well-honed over the past decade kicks in, numbing emotions and feelings. Most importantly it also cuts off any access with others, discarding them as threats, superfluous or simply potential trigger sources. Emotional deadening is the goal, until all that is left is just this contained core of pain, wrapped by this layer of human skin which is the apparent guise of my body.

That's all I am at this point: just layer after layer of intense, excruciating pain, barely kept in check by emotional safeguards developed over more than a decade of pure survival. Next week will be just another chapter in this pointless saga, as I try to force my gynaecologist and family doctor into doing their jobs and keep what may be the last possibility I have of a positive medical outcome from slipping through my fingers.

There's just me. Surviving. Other people may just as well be mere figments of my imagination, aside from those who seek to harm and hurt me. There's no salvation. No help. No hope.

Thus I will keep putting up a brave face as I venture into the world again come Monday, yet my outward appearance is just a show without substance, for inside I'll forever be trapped inside this personal hell of pure pain and agony. I ache to rip off this hideous skin to show everyone the true pain inside and make them understand just how much I am suffering. Yet I cannot. Only those who have suffered this much can understand, and everyone of us suffered so much because we're helpless to change anything.

Please let me end this pain. Forever...


Maya