I heartily miss my imprisoned son..but it doesn't do any good to mention or acknowledge it. Nothing anyone can do about it anyway and it's been a long running storyline. The feeling of his loss comes and goes. I try not to think about it too much as that type of emotional pain makes me want to scream.
Emotional pain is quite real. Not sure who will believe that or not. I think, yet am unsure, that I feel emotional pain quite acutely and more sharply than most. I have no comparison so add another IDK, I don't know, in there.
Body memories are also real pain. They are a mixture of emotional and physical pain. Say that someone grabbed your arm and twisted it behind your back, sharply and soundly, for ten minutes causing excruciating pain. Then say that you could only handle the intensity of the pain for two minutes before you disassociated, left your body to go hide in the inner, far reaches of your mind. Those eight minutes of physical, body pain are still hanging around. Sometimes they, the body memories, resurface. I would have used the more common example of being raped and overwhelmed but, maybe you get the idea. If not goggle body memories. Some things are rather difficult to mention.
Regular, everyday physical pain...I handle with great irregularity and little semblance of sense. Take my recent TMD, jaw pain incident. The first five days, when my jaw was so swollen that it was pressing on my trigeminal nerve, sending shooting pain thru half my face...that pain I probably felt identically as a Neuro-typical would. Nerve pain is quite severe. On day six when the nerve calmed down, I was left with regular ol displaced, swollen jaw pain which was about 50% as painful as the nerve thingy.
So I continued to religiously take my Motrin and I could easily tell when my dose was due as the pain and swelling increased. I could feel and visually see when it was med time. My jaw has continued healing to the point where I am forgetting to take meds at the regular intervals. Let's say this pain is a four on a ten scale, with ten being intolerable. Once the pain gets below five, I don't recognize it in the normal way. Instead of physically feeling and noticing the pain...I get irritable, crabby and my hands twitch a whole lot more than usual. It's almost as if I am somewhat numb to the actual, local pain, but my body still hurts and tells my hands to tic so that I'll take my pills.
This is simply another one of those things that makes no sense. Another example...my back was sore from a little overwork. I didn't recognize the back pain, rather, once again, I became extremely irritable. As soon as I thought about it, took some meds, than I could tell that I must have been in pain.
Forgetting has it's disadvantages. I'll try eating a semi-normal meal or talk for an hour and then I am more acutely reminded that I need to take it easy...take smaller bites, talk less. Oh yes, I am reminded that I forgot, surely and sorely.
It's like I easily recognize pain when it's at ten, but if it drops to anywhere below five I am at a complete loss. I remember the gallbladder surgery. The scenario was the same. As long as I took prescribed doses at exact times, I was ok. But if I missed one dose, the pain quickly roared back up to a ten.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that my sense of pain is complicated. I don't always know when my body is in physical pain. Emotional pain sometimes presents as body pain. And body memories are very real physio-emotional pains.
Here's the thing. All you need to know...if I tell you I am in pain, I am. It may not make sense in your head, you and I may not understand it but it is real. Bottom line.
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