Pathos, Pain, and Percentages (Or, My Masochistic Machismo)

I don't know how the cat knows. Maybe I start to smell weird. Maybe he's as good at reading my face as my grandmama is. Whatever cat hoodoo he's using to divine my pain level, it's incredibly accurate. He adds his weight to the heating pad. He licks my worst ankle. I am grateful for his attention.

To make a long story very short, I've condensed this summer's events into a numbered list:

1. I gave myself pancreatitis this summer because I stopped eating.

2. I stopped eating because of a particularly nasty flare of my Ulcerative Colitis.

3. The UC flare was caused by an urinary tract infection.

4. The doctor who found the UTI neglected to run a full blood panel and sent me home with pancreatitis to writhe on my couch with the most painful condition a human can stand for a full week before my mother forced me to go to a different ER.

Now that we're caught up, I need to tell you what the other not-incompetent ER doc told me, "I know you're in a lot of pain, but some people with Ulcerative Colitis present this way while flaring." If I had been able to draw a deep enough breath, I would have laughed in his face.

Just to make sure we're all on the same page, I will tell you what Ulcerative Colitis is. I will not discuss the more unpleasant symptoms. If you want to be thoroughly grossed out, google it. Ulcerative Colitis is an autoimmune disease which effects the colon, joints, eyes, and less frequently, the liver and skin.

What that means: my immune system is homicidal. It interprets the good bacteria and food inside my large intestine as an invasion force. So, like any strong, healthy immune system, it bombards the living shit out of the invader until the invader backs the fuck off. The problem is, I need food and bacteria to live. In its war on those things, it creates millions of open sores along the full length of my intestine. In addition to this joyous circumstance, my super-strong-yet-entirely-insane immune system also attacks my joints and causes my eyes to swell. Some days I can barely wear shoes and can't manage my contacts at all.

Now that we all understand the science, let me tell you what it feels like:

Take an empty sausage casing. Stick a million razor blades through it. Twist.

Ask your best friend to jump up and down on your ankles.

Poke yourself in the eye.

Better yet:Acquire road rash. Scrub road rash with steel wool. Then give yourself epic food poisoning.

Now you understand what it's like every time I eat during a flare.

And that's all pain I can put into words. The pain of pancreatitis isn't like that. It is unspeakable. It is death in your belly. It is boiling alive in acid. It eats you up.

The problem with my face is that it's too expressive. My instructors always know when I am thinking something. If I know I am going to make a face, I can control it. I walk around most of the time pretending it doesn't hurt, that I'm just an average 27 year old woman. I actively think, "When you hurt, you show the tension in your eyes first. Smiling creates similar lines. Smile and people won't notice." This works out most of the time. It takes a discerning eye to see the pain on my face. My grandmama can always see it. My friend Kara, with her artist's eye, can see it sometimes too.

I go through a lot of trouble to carry on as if things are normal. Because I don't want to talk about what it's really like. Because I want to win. Because I want to understand myself as someone who is strong no matter what. Because I despise weakness--most of all, in myself.

Tuesday my doctor asked me what percentage of the time I spend in some kind of pain when I'm flaring. It never occurred to me to consider it in those terms. But there was a time before the pain, when I never hurt at all. Now the pain is a person who lives inside my body. I am not without her, and she is never far from me.When I asked my doctor what I could do to help my left ankle, which is by far the worst of my joints, she told me that my colon and my joints are "wound up tight like a ball of snakes." My tattoo nearly tingled, because those snakes are just going to keep eating each other up until I die. And I deceived myself if I ever thought any different. I just need to smile through it, give myself a chance to value my own strength, keep my life stress free, and eat plenty of calories--even when every bite becomes a sacrificial gesture on behalf of my daughters. Because food is not my enemy. Anorexia is. And right now, she's eating me alive.

I can't let her win. I can't retreat to my heating pad and sleep through the flare. I must stay up to stay alive.

Why I NEED a New Tattoo, in 4,000 Words or Less

If you're just joining us on DiseaseTalk with Denise Disease, we here at Set Your Jaw recommend that you reference these three posts:

"Well, fuck."

*various words on why I hate my body*

"My Tattoos, Myself"

In fact, it would serve you well to read all posts from March 2011. There's some interesting back story there, anyway.

Jessica Weisenberg is a sensible girl. It's true. My Aunt Ruth told me so, and she never lies. Jessica does not spend money on herself frivolously. She turns in her homework on time and she braids her daughters' hair before bed so it won't tangle by morning. She is the picture of femininity because self sacrifice is the apex of the feminine existence.

Okay, maybe none of that is true. Certainly, that last bit is not. 

Lately I find myself to be quite a bit less pragmatic than usual. Instead of buying myself clothes that fit, for example, I bought an iPad and a new tattoo. Why? Well for one thing, I'm still losing weight. Secondly, iPads and tattoos are forever and frankly, I don't care enough about bodies to keep clothes that long. Thirdly, we're all going to die, people. Your family, friends and children, they will die. This is true. I've been a little closer to it than I hope most of you have, and let me tell you: there's nothing there but nothingness, so you best enter into nothing with the best, least regretful self you can manage.

The tattoo I am getting is AURYN from The Neverending Story. I'm going to go against my nature and tell you why in as explicit terms as I can bear:

1. AURYN, the thing itself

As a child I knew I was, for lack of a better term, Other. I was a bastard, a girl, very smart, very poor, imaginative, outspoken, and I had many, many reasons to be precocious in ways I wish no child ever had to be precocious. I watched The Neverending Story approximately 15,000 times. Because the fantasy appealed to me as means of escape.

Later, when I began to realize I would be a poet, my greatest fear became The Nothing. I have many references to Nothing in my notebook. Sartre is responsible for some of them. Sebastian is responsible for the rest.

I began to rekindle my admiration for AURYN wholeheartedly when I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, because of the concept of eating ones' inverse, which I equated with microscopic cells eating my full vibrant life--but also because is an infinity symbol, ouroboros and pisces all rolled into one. 

2. The Earthling Symbol for Everything

Many years ago, I was introduced to a girl who said, "You must be the infinite Miss Jessica." At least, that's what I thought she said. It is entirely possible that she said "infamous." Infamous would be more likely. Nonetheless, I heard Infinite. 

At the time, I was 18, at a creative low point but rapidly racking up experience points. I realized, whether or not it was true, that I considered myself infinite. I was sure the universe provided infinite substantive amusement. I was sure I would never run out of thoughts. I was sure I would never run out of words. Then I wasn't 18 anymore. And I was scared I'd lose my infinite qualities. I began to think of every day of my assimilation into adulthood and the middle class as a sanitation process, whereby the bacteria which provided my access to the Force was bleached from my being.

I am not worried about that now. My deep brain is full enough of gender/class/race that I know I'll always have one thing or another to consider and many things to make from each consideration. So maybe I am infinite after all.

2. The Ouroboros

If you didn't already know, the ouroboros is an ancient alchemy symbol which represents infinite creation and destruction, much in the same way my cells will infinitely keep destroying each other and recreating themselves. Really, there are too many things to say about this guy. So, I'll let Carl Jung do it:

The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of the individuation process than we moderns do, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail.

The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself.

The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This ‘feed-back’ process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he therefore constitutes the secret of the prima materia which unquestionably stems from man’s unconscious.

4. Pisces

Yes, my birthday does fall on the ides of March. Yes, that does technically make me a pisces. No, I don't believe in astrology. Because I believe astrology, like all other beliefs outside of my own belief system, is bullshit. Please, let's not pretend any other kind of believer (or cynic) thinks differently about their beliefs vs. other beliefs. If it weren't bullshit to them, they'd believe that thing and not the other thing.

I do, however, believe in personalities. As for myself, I am an INFP. What astrological sign corresponds to the INFP? Why, Pisces, of course.

In addition to the COINCIDENCE that my personality lines up with my sun sign, (and I cannot stress the word COINCIDENCE enough,) I identify strongly with the duality of pisces.  You see, the fish are supposed to be swimming in a circle of fantasy/reality, which is what I am doing all the time: Bookkeeper Jessica -->Arty Jessica --> Mama Jessica --> Poet Jessica --> Filial Piety Jessica --> Least Possible Scenario Jessica --> Pragmatic Jessica --> English Major Jessica--> White Trash Jessica --> Masquerading as Middle Class Jessica--> PTA Jessica--> Chanteuse Jessica...ad. infinitum. Frankly, it's exhausting. But I've come to the point now where I realize that most of us can only ever hope to be self aware versions of the stereotypes we always were but thought we weren't. 

So yes, a tattoo. To symbolize my defeat over the HellSummer. To tell myself I've accepted my disease and it's time to move on from letting it ruin my life. To remind myself that I am strong. To symbolize that however much time I spend eating myself, I am recreating myself in equal proportion. 

In ten or fifteen years, after I get cancer, lose my colon, and I become okay with all of that, I will get another tattoo. It will be this:

Because then I will have become a master of death.