I originally planned to write a post all about how certain traumatic incidences can result in specific psychological trauma. However, after doing some research, I came to realize that my conclusion: "do this, and it will result in that" was wrong.
I will explore this in the future, do more research and see if I can write it properly. However, it's currently Monday the 29th of October, and I have a blog post to write. So, realizing that it was just two days from Halloween, I was reminded of a post I wrote a long time ago about my personal experience with the theme of the Countdown. That year, the theme was "bloody" and confronting one's own mortality, so I wrote The AWN'S Top 5 Personal Near-Death Experiences, and told you about five times that I nearly died.
Since this year is about pain, suffering and Torture, this year, I've done some personal reflection, and I have come up with the five most painful injuries that I've ever sustained. Now, after creating this list, I realized that I live a rather privileged life. In fact, I said at the very beginning of this year's Countdown:
"And as someone who has lived a very privileged life - privileged enough to have earned 27 years of it so far - pain isn't something that I encounter in my life. At least, not pain inflicted upon me, anyway."
- The Absurd Word Nerd, The Torment of Tartarus, 2018
The thing is, this is very true. Sure, I've chipped a tooth, I've been electrocuted, I've had a root canal (in that same tooth), I've been in a fight before & I think I may have had a concussion, although I don't remember it very well . . .But, not only are all of these not on this list because they didn't actually hurt that much at the time, but I spoke with my parents just to be sure I wasn't forgetting anything and I have confirmed with them: I have never been bitten by an animal larger than an insect, I have never broken a bone in my body, I have never been hospitalized & even with my mental illnesses, I've never self-harmed.
Genuinely, before I sat down, and managed to jog my memory, "gas pains" and "sunburn" were on this list. I left off gas pains because that's not really an injury, but Sunburn was on a list of the worst pain I've ever experienced. And yeah, it was nasty-looking sunburn, but the point that I'm making is that this is a personal list, it isn't a contest . . . but, the reason I called this is "The Pain Game" (besides the fact that it sounded cool) is because, if you want to, you can make it a contest if you'd like. Feel free to write your own list of the most painful physical injuries that you've experienced in your life, and share your pain with the world. Until then, this is . . .
The Absurd Word Nerd's Top 5 Most Painful Injuries (That I Have Experienced)
5. Carbon Fibre Splinters
Incident: Have you ever been inside of a roof? Not just under the ceiling, but inside the roof of a house? I have, a few times, but one of the worst was definitely in my current home (at time of writing). We decided to put in an attic, for the sake of storage, so we installed a ladder (yes, it turns out you can just buy roof access ladders), and my father put down boards for the floor, and some shelves, and ta-da, we had an attic. Now, we helped of course, by cleaning up a little, and my brother helped to organize our network cables so that they weren't under the boards, and he also helped put in the ladder. After the ladder was installed, I helped the set up the shelves, and clean up the roofspace.
But, whoever had installed our roofing insulation had been incredibly lazy, and just kinda chucked big slabs of fibreglass insulation, also known as "glass wool" around the roof. So, even though I never laid my hands on it directly, the little fibres were everywhere, and that afternoon when I climbed down, I realized that my hands were stinging. We eventually swept and even vacuumed up there, and made sure that the fibres were gone. The only real way to get it out is to use sticky-tape, but it took me two days, and several attempts with the sticky-tape roll, to remove every single fibre from my hand.
The Pain: Fibreglass is what it sounds like, glass that's turned into thin fibrous strands. So, essentially, my hands were being impaled by hair-thin shards of glass. Don't get me wrong, there's a reason why I say I'm privileged, this is not the worst pain in the world, but if you have just one of these fibres in your hand, it hurts a lot, because they're quite rigid, so every time you move your hand, you will feel the fibre move inside your skin, which is a sting that is not entirely unlike the feeling of being bitten by a small ant, so having it all over my palms, and between my fingers, was very painful.
4. 11-Hour Walk
Incident: My friend Sean and I do some silly things sometimes, and one time, out of boredom, we decided to go for a walk. I had some vague notion that I was going to see a friend but we didn't really have a goal. So, even though neither of us had slept, we both decided "fuck it" and so we just left my place and started walking North, with a map in my pocket and nothing else. It was an interesting time, because we actually encountered some obstacles which we had to overcome, and on more than one occasion we got lost, but after eleven hours of walking, we were nearly at our destination, and our feet hurt a little bit, and we were both tired. So, we both sat at a picnic table and fell asleep. I don't know how long we slept for, but when we eventually woke up, we decided to stand up, and when we did, our feet hurt like hell.
The Pain: I don't entirely understand the mechanism, I think that because humans are supposed to walk, when we walk for a long time, our body must numb the pain. I'm sure you've had the experience of sitting down and realizing that you can't stand up again because your feet hurt too much? Well, we did, but we did after walking for eleven hours. After you've walked for eleven hours, every step feels like you're walking barefoot over sharp gravel, and your feet are hot and throbbing the entire time. The worst part is that at the time, we still needed to get home. So, we were actually stuck until Sean decided to walk to the train station. So, we had to walk about half a kilometre to the train station. That was the hardest part of the whole journey.
3. The Stomach Pinch
Incident: My grandmother used to live in a house in Grafton, with a big garden out the back, a huge shed, and beside a caryard. It was a lovely house, but for some reason after living in it for several years, she installed a gate by the stairs leading from the back patio to the backyard. I don't know why she bothered, it was just two or three steps, and nobody had tripped on it before. Maybe it was because my grandfather had dementia and she didn't want him to walk out. Maybe it was to stop the kids from heading outside, maybe it was to keep the dogs out - I honestly don't know, I don't even know if she still had dogs at that point. What I do know is that, it went across the top of steps, and the gap was about a metre and a half across. So, to make sure that the gate folded away neatly, it had a hinge in the middle as well as on the side, which you could unbolt.
Because my brothers, cousins and I were stupid, little kids, we really liked playing on that gate, by standing on the lower bars and opening it. If you unlocked the middle bolt, then opened the gate, it would feel like you were floating, since it would swing open, but you'd turn on the hinge . . . this was before everyone had iPhones, and we had to make our own fun. We would play on it all the a time, but parents would yell at us because "it's not a toy", so of course we had to do it when they weren't looking. One day, I was heading to the shed to join my brothers or something - I think they were doing something with the car, I can't remember. What I do remember is that I stood in the middle of the gate, unlocked it, and swing. But, I heard someone coming, so I quickly pushed off the wall to close it, and straightened the gate whilst I was leaning on it. and some of my skin just under my bellybutton caught in the metal hinge as it closed.
The Pain: It's hard to describe, because it was definitely a pinch - if you've been pinched, you know what that feels like - but it actually tore out a little chunk of my flesh, and I still have the scar today, a little round spot about the size of a fingernail. Because it ripped out so quickly, it actually felt like I'd been punched in the stomach, and I remember stepping back from the gate and doubling over. It throbbed and was sore for the rest of the day, and even once it started to heal and scab over, there was a bruise on my stomach around the wound. It didn't bleed, but it hurt for a week, and when I first picked the scab off, it was gross to see that it literally had ripped my skin out, since there was a little concave hole where skin was, and now wasn't. It grew back, but I know how much it hurt because even though I don't know how old I was, or what else happened that day, I remember that pain.
2. Getting Foot Stitches
Incident: When I was younger, my uncle had a boat and a few times, he invited us to go with him to some publicly-accessible river somewhere, we usually had picnics and went swimming, it was fun. But, one thing we sometimes did is that, beside the river, there was also a big mud puddle, near the mangroves. It was fun playing in it, and slopping around, because you could just walk in the river to wash it all off, then keep playing or doing whatever. I'd played in the mud several times before, but when I headed in to join my cousin, as I stepped into the mud, I felt something happen to my foot. The best way I can describe it is, imagine you're thirsty, so you're about to take a drink of water, but before you gulp, the water suddenly disappears, and you gulp air. That's what it was like, I was going to take a step through the mud, but instead of touching the ground, I felt something, and it felt weird, so I pulled my foot out, and as I moved, my foot hurt. So, I limped into the river to wash the mud away, and saw that the water around my foot was stained red. I'd cut my foot. That, in and of itself, didn't hurt much. I think it throbbed a little, but my aunt told me to elevate my foot, which I did, and Dad organized for me to get to the GP. What hurt wasn't the damage, but what they did to fix it.
The Pain: We went to the nearest doctor, still in my swimming gear. Since I didn't know what I'd stepped on, I got a tetanus shot and some other things, but then they lay me on my stomach, applied some anaesthetic, then started stitching my foot. The thing is, either because my foot was cut open, or because the doctor hadn't put the anaesthetic in right, I felt some of the stitches. Unfortunately, the way it feels is exactly the same way it sounds - it felt like someone was stabbing my foot with a needle. But, it was made worse by the fact that it was in a spot that was already throbbing, and because I wasn't allowed to flinch. I had to bear the pain. I remember that my way of coping with the pain was rapid-fire, bad puns - to get my mind off the pain, I just tried to think of something funny to say. It didn't help much, though, as I still remember how much it hurt to have someone stick a curved needle in my foot, six times.
1. The Forearm Burn
Incident: As part of Work for the Dole, I volunteered at several venues. There was some administration and data entry work, but mostly I worked hospitality because I had a certificate in hospitality, and experience with it. So, one of the gigs I got was as one of the cooks and helping hands at the Salvation Army, Bayside. It was a church, but it also helped to feed people, as there were a few people who struggled to afford food. We would give people tea and coffee, as well as some food, and even made dinners which could be frozen, and given to people. We relied pretty heavily on foods that were donated to us from businesses that either couldn't sell them, or had excess. So, one day, we got two large slabs of meat - I think they were pork and beef, but they were huge, and perfect for roasting. We had an oven, a little gas-fire thing - basically there's just a tube full of holes in the bottom that leak gas, you light them and that cooks the food. This oven was quite small, so we had to take out all but one of the racks just to fit this thing in, and to make sure that it didn't stick to the oven, we put aluminium foil over it. So, we put it in, we cook it, and it cooks beautifully. So, we go to take it out. However, as we take it out, we realize that it's actually changed shape slightly, so the foil is sticking up, and as we pull it, the grill plate is pulling off the foil. So, to make sure it doesn't wreck the roast, I get the tongs and help it slip under the lip. So, we manage to slowly but surely pull it out. However, halfway through, a rogue piece of foil falls off, and lands right on the fire of that gas pipe I described before. In a split second, I realize that it could potentially melt and fill up the holes in the pipe - ruining the oven. So, quick as a flash, I reach in the tongs and snap up the foil, but in the process I touched the grill-plate.
The Pain: A burn is an insidious injury. When I touched the hot metal, it hurt, but when I pulled it back, it didn't feel too bad. I actually felt pretty good, since I'd saved the oven (I did research, and aluminium melts at about 660 °C, and the flame in a gas oven burns at over 1950 °C, so if I hadn't done what I did it easily could have melted and damaged the oven).
Because I know you have to, I ran it under the tap, and told the supervisor who went to get a first-aid kit. I stopped the tap, and it felt fine, so when they offered cream, I said "okay, sure, but it doesn't hurt that bad", but the supervisor told me that the burn looked red and angry. So, they put on the cream and sent me home. I didn't understand all the fuss . . . but then I started driving home. On the drive home, I don't know whether the cream wore off, or if my body just decided that it would stop numbing the area, but the burn on my arm suddenly felt like it was on fire, it was boiling hot, and as I drove it got worse and worse. I rolled up my sleeve to make sure it wouldn't touch it, and I remember as I drove, I kept yelling and swearing at my steering wheel, because for some reason it helped take my mind off the pain. There was no throbbing or stinging, it was just pure heat, I felt like I was being branded - and by some definitions, I think I had been. I am lucky that when we got home my mother had a numbing gel for burns and cuts in the cabinet, because painkiller pills didn't do anything at all. And that's the most painful injury that I've ever experienced.
Anyway, that's my list. Again, I know that I'm lucky I've had to suffer so little throughout my lifetime. Perhaps this is part of the reason why I feel like psychological horror is more powerful to me, because the things I've suffered as a result of mental illness are much worse than my physical pains.
If you asked me whether I would prefer to burn myself again or have a panic attack - and I had to choose one of the other - I would turn on the oven myself. But, I don't know if that would be true if I'd also experienced greater physical suffering.
But, do you know what this makes me think of? My fingernail is purple . . .
I am a Polished Man, still, and I will continue colouring my nail until the end of the month. As well, afterwards I will continue to support the ideals of the campaign, about leading by example and .
But, this list reminds me that this is what I want for children, everywhere. Yeah, a scratch here and a burn there, maybe sore feet . . . but, most of these injuries are just incidental - heck three of them happened because I hurt myself while having fun. Like I said, your personal pain shouldn't be a contest, but in a just world I would win that contest, because in a just world, children wouldn't be victims of rape, assault and murder. Because it shouldn’t hurt to be a child.
Anyway, this list is just for fun, it's not meant to be another part of the Polished Man campaign. I would like you to donate to myself or others, but the main point if this list is because I kept talking about the pains other people have suffered - so, I wanted to reflect on my own.
I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, these are just some of the experiences I've collected throughout my lifetime. I'm sure there will be many more to come in the future, but with any luck they won't make the list . . .
