Here we go again. It’s time for another operation, another round of liposuction, another trip to the hospital, another trip through the pain machine. This Wednesday I’ll be spending four hours in the operating room, getting more of this horrific disease sucked out of me.

    Like you’d expect, I’m not exactly looking forward to it. Who would? But this time, I’m approaching it with particular dread. I’d been in a state of blas’e denial for a while. I knew it was coming up, I just couldn’t manage to bring up any emotions about it. I slept a lot, I wondered why. It wasn’t until today that it finally hit me. Oh yeah, maybe I’m depressed about it. That might explain the numbness, the erratic hours, the inability to get up. Sure, part of that inability to wake up or get out of bed is in large part due to the pain, but when you’re depressed, you lose that extra kick that gets you out of bed on somedays anyway in spite of the pain.

    I don’t think there’s anything so weird about being depressed, certainly not in this situation. I have a lot of crap to carry at the moment; I think it would be a little unhealthy not to be depressed at least a little from time to time. Or at least, that’s what I’m telling myself.

    I keep hearing a lot from everybody about how amazing it is that I deal with all of this stuff, that I still smile anyway a lot of the time, that I haven’t turned into this major goth chick. But what I hear the most is how incredibly my pain tolerance must be, and how no one else can seem to imagine how much pain I must have to deal with all the time.

    You know what? They’re right. They can’t. They have no idea. Some days I really wish I could wear a huge sign around my neck that says, “Excuse me, I really don’t mean to be a witch, I just hurt so much that sometimes it’s that much harder to smile.” I think the fact that I do tend to smile a lot deceives people, it makes them forget that I really do hurt. Every minute of every day of every week of every month, I hurt. Not just a slight ache, not just the feeling of a few bruises. I really hurt. Every inch of my flesh, inside and out, hurts. My system is swimming in two narcotics, a straight anesthetic, and a sedative, yet I still hurt with such intensity that even the slightest fold of fabric against my skin can be unbearable.

    Maybe the smiles are a defense mechanism. Maybe if they forget I will to. Sadly it doesn’t work that way. I hurt, and yet I keep smiling anyway, I keep laughing. But sometimes that stops and I cry instead. It’s a tough balancing act, trying to live my life anyway in spite of the pain. I just wish sometimes that the world could know when they look at me, just for a second, what it’s like to hurt all the time. I don’t know why, I just do. Maybe they’d be more understanding, maybe they’d be more forgiving if sometimes the things I say don’t always come out in the most pleasant tone of voice. I try, but I slip sometimes, without even meaning to.

    The pain tolerance. The magical pain tolerance I’m supposed to have, the one so many people keep telling me about. Yeah, sure, I’ll agree that my physical pain threshold has gotten to be pretty seasoned and substantial. But true pain tolerance isn’t just physical, it’s emotional too. And after such a long time, as one builds, the other breaks down. It breaks down all the time. And you start getting to the point where you can’t help but ask yourself, how much farther can it sink, how much lower can it go before it breaks completely? My body may be trained to take this, but my head and my heart just aren’t.

    Regardless of that, Wednesday’s going to come, just like it always does. And along with it is another humiliating tour through the operating room, another rude, violent awakening in recovery, another eternity trying to overcome the added pain. More hospitals, more nurses, more emegencies, more tears, more bedpans, more emesis basins, more tests, more needles; more everything but what I want.

    How can I take it? How can I handle it? How can I get wheeled in there again and expect to make it out to the other side with that emotional threshold still intact? I don’t know. But I guess I’ll find out, because I don’t really have much choice. This is what’s been dealt to me, so what can I do? I take it. And we’ll just have to see what happens.

    I need something happy. Any ideas?