Pain Is Embarrassing

but it is also a student waiting on permission to teach

Yesterday was painfully embarrassing (literally). I made a mistake at work. While opening up a glass bottle with a bottle opener I accidentally knocked it into a large glass pitcher full of hibiscus tea. The pitcher burst, glass shattered on the floor & tea went into every nook & cranny possible smh. I felt like Amelia Bedelia, chile. Fortunately, my sister-friend/coworker MJ was there to tend to the people while I scurried, trying to clean up my mess, but also will myself into invisibility.

I squished around in my sandals, caught up in trying to make me & my mess as small & invisible as possible, I didn’t realize I was hurt. Until I felt it again, a faint soreness on my left ankle. Finally, I took a break from scurrying to lift my muumuu (pardon me, it’s a “kaftan” when I wear it outside my house). To my shock & horror, I stared down at a very bad, very bloody cut.

As quickly as I’d assessed it, I looked away. I asked MJ to look at it to tell me what she thought. She had a better vantage point than I did. Also, I was a lil freaked out. She looked at it & confirmed, “Oh yea, this is a whole emergency, you need to go to the bathroom” I shushed her, laughed nervously & asked “why can’t I feel it then?” She asked “why is it congealing like that??” Seeing that the blood that had oozed down my ankle to my sandal strap had formed into a web-like substance. I don’t know if it was nervousness or shock, but I laughed again. It kinda felt like two little girls pretending to be adults in a very adult situation.

She quickly wet some paper towels for me & urged me to clean it so I could assess just how bad the cut was. I went to the bathroom to find that it was so bad that the hibiscus tea I thought I was squishing around in my sandals in, was actually my blood. It had pooled around my foot, between my toes & run out of my sandals. It had started to congeal around the buckle, which was my saving grace.

Thank God for bodies being such self-preserving, smarter than we are, well-oiled organisms. Had the blood not congealed , I would’ve lost a lot more blood than I already had. Unbeknownst to me, I had walked in the blood for so long that it had stained the bottom of my foot, down to the white thread on the sole of my sandals. As I peeled my sandal off, the panic set in.

I was embarrassed that I’d made a mistake so big that I’d not only made a huge mess, that I hadn’t finished cleaning but I’d also hurt myself in the process. I didn’t know what to do. So I talked myself through some deep breaths as I balanced myself on one foot before realizing I could sit, fully clothed, on the toilet.

I have very little experience with physical pain, none that I can remember. And if I’m being honest growing up, most pain & discomfort was treated like an inconvenience in our house. Something to be addressed discreetly & moved on from, without drawing too much attention. And in the same way, I wanted so badly to move past this.

I was fighting that child-like feeling of telling “the adult in charge” that I needed help with a problem I’d caused. I wanted to snap my fingers, be done with it & get back to working like nothing happened. That’s what I was used to, but I was cut badly, that truth was unavoidable. After rushing through trying to clean my wound & any evidence that it even existed then burying the paper towels in the trash can, I accepted my fate.

I was hurt, it was bad, and I didn’t know what to do, but I probably needed to leave.

In hindsight, I think I might’ve felt I needed permission to do the next thing, to take care of myself.

I walked out, riddled with guilt. I looked at MJ & said the first thing that came to mind, “it’s bad, it is an emergency…I don’t know what to do”. She calmly said, “You need to figure out the next step. Do you have the car?” (sometimes I get dropped off) I said yes. She told me I probably needed to go to Urgent Care, neither one of us having health insurance, we shared some thoughts on how I needed a non-health insurance backup plan. She told me what I might need to pick up from the pharmacy, but also told me to search the internet to make sure I got the right stuff.

I apologized profusely & added that I was “sorry for the mess”. She laughed, probably at the ridiculousness of me apologizing for the mess while I was bleeding out. She kindly said, “I don’t need you to be sorry, I need you to be careful & take care of yourself”. She gave me a hug & said a quick prayer for me, then sent me on my way.

I started to feel the pain from the cut a little more.

I’ve worked so many jobs over the years where it was made clear that the people working the jobs were deprioritized as much less important than the job, the customers, the people on the phone, the delivery route, etc.

I had been trained to neglect my needs. It never felt good, but it wasn’t foreign to me because I was raised to neglect my needs to show up for the people that depended on me or who I didn’t wanna embarrass. It was a discomfort that I settled into early on as a necessary evil of adulthood, caretaking, customer service, and hospitality work.

While driving to the pharmacy, past Urgent Care & back home so many thoughts flooded my mind, but what I was waiting on was for the current to slow down enough for my feelings to rise.

I still couldn’t really feel the pain from my ankle being sliced open.

I started to think even more, since I couldn’t feel. I wondered if my brain had trained my body to actually not feel my pain, because it knew that it usually wasn’t “allowed” (read: believed, addressed, nurtured, prioritized).

On the way home I got my girlfriend on the phone & told her what happened & that I’d need her help when I got in. Once I assured her that I was okay driving & almost home, she calmed down & said she’d be ready to take care of me when I got in. Mind you, she’s been out from work all week with a very bad cold. But she went to school for Sports Medicine so I knew she’d be able to take care of it better than I could on my own.

As I inched my way through traffic in silence, feeling a little more relieved that at no point did I have to handle this alone or put on a brave face or set aside my pain to serve others,

I started to really feel my pain.

Which was very painful & very uncomfortable, but I felt like my body actually needed to settle into a new truth. Which was that it had permission to feel my pain, to address my pain, to prioritize my pain, and to nurture my pain.

I cried a little in the car, because the little girl in me needed permission to do that too.

I was hurt, but I was also noticing & growing.

By the time I got home my girlfriend was waiting to take care of me. I didn’t have to pretend like it didn’t sting to be cleaned, have antibiotic cream applied, or bandaged.

I didn’t have to feel like a nuisance to be cared for and prioritized by my partner.

My support system feels different

And I don’t have to pretend not to feel my pain anymore.

Amelia Bedelia Goes To Work