pain

I smashed my finger today at work, the same finger i smashed a month ago, in the same way. The pain was so intense i involuntarily screamed. It was the most severe moment of pain i've experienced since kidney stones a couple years ago, although it was only momentary, rather than hours-long. Surprisingly, only a couple hours later, it just felt sore--like after the first smash, so i figured it was likely not broken.

The trauma was even more intense psychologically. As with the first smash, the first thing that occured to my mind after screaming was something like a feeling of complete rage at, and betrayal by, the Universe. Like the first event, i then wondered if i would ever play music again. This was followed by the realization i would not play viola, as planned, at this weekend's marimba performance.

Still in a state of desperation, and still fully alone in my experience (although later people would report they heard my yell from outside the cooler), i wondered what to do. Kicking over a trash can felt slightly useful. I sat down in the break room, bowed my head and silently said an Our Father. I noticed while doing so, i was completely dissociated from the burning rage in my chest that had been so persistent in the previous moments. This shift was more disconcerting than comforting.

I thought the tresspass part of the prayer might echo in my consciousness somehow, but it was lead us not into temptation i kept stumbling over. This i took as a guide for the managing the ensuing moments, which seemed useful, and likely had a slight calming effect. A fellow crewmember came in, saw me sitting and not responding, offering as he walked out that he just made some decent coffee if i'd like some. I appreciated the gentle kindness of his voice. I did have a small cup, which helped me ground. By then the pain had become tolerable enough to report it rather calmly and professionally to the foreman.

For about the next hour i was in a really miserable state mentally, coping externally--moving yogurt boxes around, but not all there. It was reminiscent of psychotic states i experienced in 1992. (In retrospect, it is interesting that all trauma at this point in my life is a re-experiencing of prior trauma, perhaps coming up to be unwound? To be able to retrace the various qualitites and patterns along the pathway between normal thinking and schizophrenic offers a certain integrative opportunity i suppose. I did not have this sense of meaning this morning.)

At the time, my adrenaline was so flooded that my mind was just hammering at trying to find meaning amidst this event. Thoughts ran relentlessly: Did i create it by thinking wrong thoughts? Did my dyslexia blog set me up? (I did notice an oddly distinct moment of dyslexia while printing out an invoice a couple minutes before hurting myself.) Am I being punished for something? Ancestral karma? Is it a test of my faith?

When i neglected to ask for help consolidating the pallet of turkeys, was i giving in to poor-quality "have-to" thinking? Am i paying the price for wrong thinking about that whole subject.

Maybe the new agers are right, and our thoughts and words create our reality. (This led to deeper suffering as i began to imagine i needed to constrict my thoughts and words to only the good ones, and for the rest of my life.) This fed into kototama principle-related thoughts: i must be vibrating on a wrong dimensional frequency. Maybe i need to quit and teach kototama...

Along with this, I felt just so stupid for doing the same thing to the same finger. I thought i liked it here now, i was feeling strong and safe. How can i trust anything i think or feel now? (More suffering.) Why the same frikin finger? What is the meaning of pain? Why does God provide such pain, and why is it apparently doled out so unjustly? Or is it about some evil influence?

As i began stocking individual yogurts onto shelves, i found some consolation remembering a book from anthropology class, We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us. It was a description of the conditions and experiences of Bolivian miners, most of whom are indigenous, very poor and without many options. I recalled how many of them lose their health and lives to the mines. Yet the mine is such an intergal part of their experience that the workers find their strengths, their personalities, their emotions, even their cosmology in relation to it (or "her"). Most of the workers feel a deep personal affection for her--as provider, as supernatural being, as Earth--along with their fears.

I began to feel less crazy, thinking i may have been forming a similar relationship with the dairy box, and TJ's in general. The place has given me a sense of strength and competence, achievement, camraderie, exercise, daily rhythm. I've also had as many large and small injuries on this job as i can remember anywhere else i've worked. I eat the box and the box eats me. As is often the case, i am able to find context and sympathetic understanding for my experience from beyond my own cultural framework of what it means to be human.

Then i thought of how many others get injured in labor jobs, some of whom give up, some of whom persevere despite way worse situations. I recalled an immigrant's story of his father's heroic commitment to his job, despite such a situation. And thinking this, i felt still less alone, and hence less stupid, and less crazy. Empathy from closer to home. (And useful info about my psychology also: aloneness infused my psychosis deeply also.)

As the morning wore on, i shared my pain with a couple folks, and received some very sincere real-time empathic responses, which were deeply appreciated. By mid-morning, it all seemed like less of a big deal. Maybe i'm just f*cking clumsy.

Finding that meaning-in-the-pain had become a less psychotically-pressing matter.