Pain on Autopilot

I’m okay.

I'm okay until I’m alone. Then I start to get itches. I start to feel the pain flooding in. Then in the flustered result of my panicked nervousness, I begin to drown, looking for something to make it stop, to take my eyes off of it, to help me look away. Because when I was little, if I got hurt, my parents would make me look away if it was bleeding, if it was ugly... if it was bad. There's a reason for that.

I’ve begun living on a day-to-day basis. Getting through one at a time instead of looking to the next week, or the months to come. I just get through Wednesday. Check. Thursday. Check. Friday. Did it. Saturday. Room for improvement. Sunday. Check. Monday...

My face turns sour to say it. Monday.

Work was good  Monday. It was steadily slow, just like Keith said it would be, the most pleasant kind of slow. Enough to keep me alive, not robotic and work mode-ish, but not slow enough to make me lazy and wish I was home. I steadily kept care of a few tables at a time, genuinely glad to be there.

I was happy, enjoying the company of the other co-workers. I even talked about the pain a little, that’s how good Monday was going.  I talked about it casually, like I talked about a day at the doctors. Not much emotion, concern, even though everyone else showed sympathy. I’d shambolically (but surely) become numb to the pain. I sincerely did not feel it. I kept an armor on, fully equipped with shields and weapons to protect myself with. I don’t feel it. I don’t need sympathy, I don’t need hugs.
But then it hit me. Well it didn’t even hit me. My armor would have protected me from that.

It gutted me.

It took a major blow to my stomach while I wasn’t looking, while I was happily pulling my ponytail tighter and grabbing a beer from the bar. Just, mid-sentence, there it was. The pain. Clobbering at me. Choking me from behind. And it’s grip was so tight I couldn’t yell for help. I stared at Cassandra, horrified, and I couldn't explain. So I just made an urgent beeline to a place, any place, where I could be alone. Because I knew it was too late to find sanctuary.

So I just trudged to find a place where it could beat me in private, where no one could watch, and do that pointless thing where they try to comfort me. Because they don’t know that the throbbing anguish is so much stronger than they are, dominant and more evocative than the sweet miniscule words of anyone else. It continued to keep punching me through their embraces.

I was oozing with pain. And all I could do was sob in agony, completely sloppy. Wet, loud, guttural cries. That’s all that came out while they watched me, frightened to death of me, I'd imagine. How I had just been fine moments ago. Just been smiling and catering to guests, assisting co-workers, laughing at everything. And now here I was. Crying and gasping like  I had just been violently attacked.

Humiliating. Excruciatingly demoralizing.

I clutched my ribs in hopes to keep it all in, to stifle the cry, and it helped a little. Not much. But any help seemed like so much to me. I think

The pain was causing insanity and at the time, and the insanity effected my judgment.

They relieved me from work. I was obviously not functional enough to even walk out of the bathroom alone, much less take care of three or four tables in a normal, civilized manner.

They told me to ‘Just go’. Which was all I wanted to do from the very first blow to the insides.
I thanked Keith and he seemed to selflessly understand.

I grabbed my things and I let them hug me, and I don’t know who was who. I just thanked.

It felt almost too good once I was outside. So good, I could not go straight to my car. So I didn’t.
I just sat on the bench and looked at nothing, sort of like I was waiting for a ride. But I was enjoying the fresh air, I think, the smell of oxygen, and the feeling of being alone.

Time passed, and I don’t know how much. I know I didn’t want to stay too long. I didn’t want someone to come out and see me still there after they went through the trouble of sending me home.
Thus began my detachment from reality.

I stood up and turned on my Autopilot.

Now, Autopilot is different than the numbness that I (so fortunately) feel on a day to day basis.. When I’m numb, I’m still me, I’m just without the pain. I can think clearly. I make conscious decisions. I’m alive.

But when I can't keep going, when something goes wrong in the cockpit, and my plane starts crashing down, I have Autopilot to take over everything.

When I turn on Autopilot, it allows my physical being to work and let’s the rest of me go dead. My brain accesses everything it knows I’m supposed to do and makes me do it without cognizant thought. I drift completely out of my conscious mind. My eyes are heavy and still. They don’t move. My words are mechanical. My actions are automatic. I just do. But I am, not.

I walked thoughtlessly to the car, one foot in front of the other. My Autopilot knew where my car was parked. I didn’t. Autopilot drove me home. I know that in between, I got gas, sent messages, rejected phone calls, paid tolls, turned off the radio, and got off on all the right exits. But I do not remember a moment of it. I don’t remember it so much that I almost hope that I did do all those things as I thought.
I was completely thoughtless. I don’t remember the drive, the buildings around me, signs, cars, people. It is not in my memory at all.
I only remember wanting to go fast.
Flying home.
Flying home on autopilot. .
I desperately just wanted to just get to the house, get out of the jeans and dirty clothes, and have space to rip my hair out. I wanted to be alone, drink something. Clean everything. Indulge in my beautiful fortuitous escape. My sanity. Or insanity. And just write all this shit out.