Absence of Pain
A chance comment at the physiotherapist lead to three sessions of deep tissue massage with a trained therapist last month. I am now (unbelievably) free of physical pain for the first time in years. Deep tissue massage is not for the unwary or for those whose pain threshhold hovers at minimal. This is serious stuff – usually stoic, I let loose with a shriek or two..or three during an hour long session. The wiry and tough therapist, may the Universe shower her with all good things, mutters that I should have done this years before and assures me that she’s only ramping it up to sixty percent. I catch my breath, register the tears in my eyes. Then it starts again in another part of the back or legs or shoulders or arms. She looks concerned that I’ve learnt to live with knots and lumps, with frozen parts and tingling ones. The muscles are tight from years of misuse or disuse and releasing them involves sweet sweet pain.
The rest of the day passes in a blur of remembered agony – but the next morning is nothing short of miraculous. Having dealt with (or ignored) tight muscles, stressed shoulders and a pinched nerve in the lower back for years, I cannot adequately describe the joy of getting out of bed without feeling a warning twinge or cramp, proceeding to live a moderately active life for the rest of the day, and finally going to sleep, no part of a battered body protesting or complaining. Fellow middle aged sufferers will empathise, younger or fitter folk may mock – I can only attest that the absence of pain is the most liberating experience of all. It comes as a shock – to stop half way through the day to check in on various parts of the body, and each responds with a happy tick. A minor miracle, and one I aim to embrace fully while the going is good.
The absence of pain. These last twelve months have been a paean to letting go of pain. Festering emotional pain, long nurtured mental pain – these had a fierce grip on my life for too many years to count. It seemed that the physical pain was fast catching up. It feels wonderful to have done with all three. For the moment.
There is no denying that pain is a constant of our existence – it comes in its time and goes away, only to return in some other form or at another time of our lives. But there is no reason to allow it to take up permanent residence in brain, body or soul. I used to imagine my pain to be a wall – immutable, unchanging, unscaleable. It wasn’t always so. In the beginning, it was wave-like. Crashing in over my head, catching me unawares, but receding in time. I don’t remember when or why I allowed the waves to build, one upon another, until the fluidity changed into something solid, with substance.
I stayed cocooned within those walls for years. It took death and serendipity to break down the walls. Writing out my pain melted the barriers of mind and heart into nothingness – the cocoon is gone, I am exposed, emergent. It is, in some ways, far more frightening to live outside, with no defenses, and to understand that the pain could return. But that lies ahead and I will find ways to cope. This new life requires conscious effort – to watch for those walls and to break them down before they rise again. Right now, there is simply absence of pain. It feels earned. I intend to enjoy it.
This morning, driving to work, I was stuck at a signal. For just one moment, my thoughts turned inward and I sat there, marvelling. The brain was not in overdrive, not jumping from one wrong move to the next. The heart beat slow and steady, nothing erratic there either. The feet, calves, knees, lower back, shoulder blades, shoulders, neck, arms – almost as if the absence of pain had allowed me to step away from the body and mind for a second. Then the horns cut through my metaphysical reverie, the signal blinked to green and it turned out to be a good day to be alive.