Into the Wood Chipper

Note: This went dark fast, so… content warning? It gets graphic and ugly. Also, I do understand that there is a difference between being assaulted by someone with bad intentions and being assaulted by someone with good intentions… I just don’t care.

Everyone seems to feel that it is extremely relevant to consider the intentions… but as I used to tell Michael. If you run over me with your car, whether you meant to do it or not has shit all effect on my broken arm.

It’s Monday. It’s trauma therapy night.

For the past two days I settled into a place of absolute emotional nothingness. Not depression, as I’ve ever known it. Not sadness. Not even the ache of numbness. Just a complete lack of feeling.

even the ache of numbness. Just a complete lack of feeling.

I just didn’t care.

It was freeing.

If I’d had feelings, I’d have said I was happy to be without them.

I was in an oddly decent mood. I spoke cheerfully. I felt equanimity. When Sir took my cell phone and the Fire Stick from the TV and left me to entertain myself on the couch because I wouldn’t come to bed… I didn’t even mind.

I didn’t care.

I’ve been not caring for days, really. Not caring that I would be punished. Not caring that I was upsetting Sir and SB, not caring that I have a hematoma slowly turning my skin purple-black. Not caring what I eat, or if I eat – I actually ate really healthy food because… I didn’t care. There was no emotional difference for me between a bowl of lettuce and a bag of Cheetohs, and the lettuce was already here…

It’s… not a state I’m used to. I’m used to depression being heavy, being painful, being dark and miserable.

I told Sir, “I’m not depressed, I just don’t care about anything.”

For, I think the first time ever, I watched him pull up WebMD. He showed me an article where an expert of some type or other wrote, “A lot of women present differently with depression. They will come to my office and tell me, ‘I’m not depressed. I just don’t care about anything.”

I considered this for a beat, then told Sir, “Yes… but… I’M not depressed!”

He pointed out that I am completely indifferent to punishment – even punishments that I usually absolutely detest at levels far an above even other forms of punishment (which I detest just on general principle, and then additionally based on the relative unpleasantness of each one…) I was completely immune to the threat of punishment. And to incentives as well. Sir and SB have tried… so many things… to help me go to bed… and nothing… nothing has mattered to me.

And the nothing grew and grew over the week until by the last two days it was complete. Literally nothing, for entire days, mattered. I wasn’t sad about it. I was mildly curious about it, but…not much. I just sat on the couch and… existed. I was pleasant enough, I was cheerful with Sir and SB. I ate when they put food in front of me… though I often lost interest and wandered away from my plate halfway through meals.

It was… pleasant?

But that’s too emotionally charged a word for it. It was fine.

That was the word I kept resorting to. “Fine.” Everything was fine. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t bad. It was just fine.

If I played games on my phone all day… that was fine.

If Sir took my phone away. That was fine.

If I ate lettuce without salad dressing. That was fine.

If I didn’t go to bed and Sir beat me with a paddle. That was fine.

If staying up meant I didn’t get read to, given candy, get extra cuddle time, earn my phone back in the morning… That was fine.

Everything was… exceedingly… fine.

I went to therapy today. Feeling fine.

I told my therapist about my fine feeling.

She poked at it a bit and my cold spot came back.

I have an almost constant cold feeling in my stomach. It is like a sense of dread or anxiety, but… if I ignore it, it exists mostly without emotional content. It is just a physical sensation.

She pushed, and asked if it had shown up.

It had.

She said, today, we get serious (we hadn’t been before… just… requiring anti-psychotics after every appointment… and that was us going easy…) and she told me to push into the cold place.

Sigh.

I don’t want to go into the cold place.

I don’t want to go close to it.

It’s like someone saying, “Here, come put your hand into this wood chipper…”

That wood chipper is not a place where hands belong. Leave it alone.

But she kept asking me to feel it… to stay with it…

It is like… all medical experiences are… the most… awful, torturous, sadistic, sickly counter-instinctive horror shows… “Hey, we’re going to make you do terribly painful and awful things… Just be polite and let us torture you… It’s for your own good…”

And I’m supposed to just submit…

I’m supposed to submit to torture… over and over again… in the name of… treatment.

It’s… perverse.

It’s like someone saying, “Hey, I’m going to rape you and leave you with horrific injuries. If you would just kindly open your legs and not scream, we can get this over with nice and quickly…”

It’s a mugger saying, “Hey there. I’m going to stab this knife into your intestines and then steal your wallet. Do be a pal and try not to fight back too much. It’s really for your own good. You wouldn’t want the knife to wind up in your throat, would you?”

I hate medicine.

I hate… treatment.

I hate… everything.

I hate this fucked up perversion that I have to submit meekly and willing to trauma and assault and because… it’s a doctor… because… I’m… paying them to do it… it’s all okay and I should just shut up and take it.

I fucking hate that I have to do this.

Why do I have do this?

It’s because a bunch of assholes couldn’t keep their dicks to themselves so now *I* have to be tortured to fix what I never asked to happen to me.

I don’t fucking want to put my hand in the wood chipper.

But I did… because… I’m a good girl and I do as I’m told. I spread my legs and bite my tongue and hold my breath and let them rip me apart…

Because… treatment.

And I cried.

I don’t cry.

I don’t cry in therapy.

I don’t cry in front of people.

I don’t… I… that’s… that’s… that’s like… gynecology level of awful… that’s… that’s… that’s… intentionally taking my clothes off and spreading my legs and letting them lever me open and rip my insides out of me…

I had to… make myself cry. On purpose. Intentionally. Go to the place that hurt and make myself break. Not just… make tears come out of my eyes… Make myself hurt so much I couldn’t stop. And I felt myself on the precipice… as I got closer and closer to the wood chipper… I felt the moment when I had to decide to thrust my hand in…

Then I did. On purpose.

And I have to do it again next week.

And the next.

And the next.

Forever.

Sir says it’s going to get easier.

What? Easier to put my hand into a wood chipper on purpose?

Great!

That sounds like a fantastic idea.

Maybe I can graduate to self-inflicted flaying after that?

And you know… nobody wants me to cut myself up with a box cutter… But going into the cold spot? That’s all great and wonderful and therapeutic and progress.

I greatly prefer the fucking box cutter.