Nociceptors

Nociceptor. 18 year old Me sat in a lecture hall at Ball State University trying to hide the fact that she was in over her head. Nociceptor. What the hell was that? And how was I ever going to master not only that term but the thousands of other new concepts that were being slung at me?

I knew I wanted to be the greatest version of myself some day, and I had set out to college to begin that journey. Being a third generation employee of a nursing home and having recently pushed my way from Laundry Assistant to Certified Nurse Aid, I personally felt that being a Director of Nursing or Administrator was the ideal pinnacle to which I should be reaching. Filled with the false confidence of my youth, I felt convicted that I had taken a thorough and exhaustive survey of my possible prospects and had successfully identified my life's calling. I was going to be a nurse. I was also going to be a professional vocalist as I had been accepted after audition in to BSU's music program. I was also going to be married by that summer to a virtual stranger (that's another story for another day) and immediately begin the process of having children. I intended to do all of this while becoming wealthy and well-traveled all before the age of 30. It seemed like I had forever and thus the small detail that I had no idea of how to actually accomplish these goals appeared irrelevant. I had identified myself as being extraordinary and above statistical odds. I found the idea of being normal terrifying- a claustrophobic concept to be confined to any identified limit.

One small problem- I was clueless. It didn't take long to have the extent of my cluelessness forced down my throat. Every domain of my life quickly began forcing lessons on me. Classes covered topics that were truly novel, leaving me in an unfamiliar puzzled nature as straight A's had come easily to me in high school. Credit card companies that so willingly provided me with shiny new pieces of plastic began wanting money each month. My distant and manipulative husband-to-be obtained a new interest and betrayed my trust. My built in human alarm clock (thanks mom) was no longer living with me and I wondered what moron scheduled me for an 8am Anatomy course across campus. My last living grandparent died right around Thanksgiving that first year of adult hood and I suddenly realized the family logical progression towards the grave had an entire generation less of buffering spaces between myself and the end remaining.

As I lie in my dark dorm room after skipping yet another day of classes, I played depressing music and tried to feel anything but pain. I sucked the joy out of everyone around me like a black hole. I wasn't even half way through my freshman year at BSU and the entirety of my future loomed ahead of me like an engulfing void of hopelessness. My GPA had gone from nearly perfect in high school to failing. My marriage would not be happening. I would not be having children any time soon. Or traveling the world. Or becoming wealthy. Or doing much of anything for that matter. Wanting to put off the inevitable "walk of shame" back to my home town, I delayed the process for another wasteful and expensive semester, allowing myself to be on academic probation while continuing to accumulate student loans, ruin my withdrawal average and strain even the closest of relationships as I keened in agony and hopelessness. Wallowing in my self-pity and praying for death. I have a chilling memory of being on the phone with my mother in the middle of the night, begging her to stop being "selfish" by telling me I couldn't kill myself.

Being a mother today, I can't imagine how my mother got through that phone call.

I began telling everyone that I wouldn't live past the age of 23 years old. It became a sort of challenge to myself, a way of telling myelf it was okay to get up and try again because I wasn't really investing much hope in to this thing called 'life'- I was checking out by 23 anyway. I melodramatically planned my funeral. I told my best friend to make sure the correct Bob Dylan song was played and that yellow roses- only yellow roses- be present on my coffin. I attempted suicide several times.

Unfortunately, this went on for most of my young adulthood to some extent. I was forced to leave BSU after failing my second semester and attempted to convince myself that I had "chosen" to take a break from school as I moved back in to my childhood home again. I repainted my childhood bedroom and sang angry man-hating music. I drank and partied as much as I could. I just wanted to be numb. It seemed that every nociceptor in my body was firing at the same time.

That term had stuck in my head from that early Anatomy class, and I'm not sure why. Nociceptors are the sensory receptors in the human body that alert us of painful stimuli. They allow us to respond to potential threats in our environment. Nociceptors are the only reason humans "feel" pain. One theory as to why this term stuck in my mind was that I felt smart knowing what it meant. Another is that it instigated an awareness on some subconscious level that began to develop upon first learning about the term. I don't think I was capable of enough critical thinking to explore what the existence of this anatomical feature meant for the rest of my understanding of life.

Today, it makes more sense to me. This was the first time I had been introduced to the concept of our reactions to pain being mechanical and not emotional. It would follow then that a change in that mechanical response could mean that our experience of pain could be entirely different. In other words, I was realizing that I was not just a "victim" to the pain I experienced in life but instead was merely reacting to a signal that was firing in my body. I couldn't grasp the implications of that understanding at the time, but I was definitely aware of the pain I was feeling.

I was disillusioned with life. I began questioning everything, including my faith in God. I felt shame and I was embarrassed. I had represented some great hope to my family and even to my community when I left to go to college. I had excelled in school and it was expected that I would continue to excel in at least some modest way. My father had been a pastor since I was in elementary school and a faithless and sinful young adult was not something he would want everyone knowing about (even if he would never want to hurt me by making me feel that way). I knew what was expected of me after sitting in the preacher's family pew for all of those years, as well as sitting at all of the award ceremonies as I went through school. There was a 'right way' and a 'wrong way' and I was in the wrong. Every ambitious part of me that had thought I might be able to create a third option had been defeated in the first battle of my adulthood.

I felt like a burn victim with all of my  nerves exposed. I couldn't find any relief. I feared the idea of physical death and eternal damnation but also longed to no longer 'be'.

The specifics of my odyssey from this place of self-doubt and self-hatred to where I am today are complex and lengthy. I deliver them in anecdotes when they seem useful or relevant to others and I don't think they are needed here, at least not right now. At some point, or rather at varying points over many years, I began to learn when and how to ignore the messages my nociceptors were sending to me and when to use these messages to my advantage.

The point of sharing these details is to demonstrate where I come from when I state that I have known pain and also have not known how to deal with that pain. I am no longer experiencing that pain. Thus, it would follow that I now know something about dealing with this pain and being able to thrive again, at least in some way. That is what I am wanting to talk more about in this portion of my story. That is where I feel there may be some value in sharing my thoughts to others.

I haven't written often in this blog as I have this strong desire to "get it right" in this space. I have written portions of my thoughts throughout the years and when I look back at them later, I struggle not to groan at my lazy prose, full of cliches and indications that I wasn't really sure what I thought about something despite writing as if I had convictions about a topic. I am no longer an impulsive young adult who is eager to jump on popular bandwagons of thought and I don't want anything I share here to be done "half way". I want to do better because I truly do care about the principles I am discussing here. Ultimately, I am committing to myself to follow up this post soon as I have so much more I want to share about my experience with pain. I hope you will come back to read more and that any part of my story might be a help to others.