To say that it is difficult to talk about is true. Not an overstatement, not an understatement. The wounds still feel like they happened in a dream. When I wake up I feel like I am going to wake up again as soon as start to move my limbs, and I do not. I wake up once and look at my hand and wrist and wiggle my fingertips and hold it up over my face and pinch myself and poke my eyebrows and sniff it and it is mine. Check after check comes back positive. "This belongs to you." There was not a mistake. There was not a swap of body parts while you were sleeping. You are awake. You are breathing. The nerves are speaking to each other as they should. Motor functions have all checked out. You are indeed occupying the body you went to bed in. Further damage has ceased. Necrosis is staved off. Healing has also ceased. It is not going to get better or return to mint, though it will also not get worse. Wake up. Get up.
Some days I wake up, since it happened, and I scream into my pillow for long pillows for long minutes. Pound my fists on the mattress. Cry until I am exhausted. And then get up and head to the shower, not to take one, but to get the bandages on my leg wet enough to peel off the still reforming skin without damaging it or tearing it because no matter how non-stick bandages claim to be, they will fuse with your newly regenerated skin and tear it off like a fine gossamer contacted with Velcro if you are not careful. If you stub your toe or brush your shin against a coffee table corner or bump against a chair leg, that newly formed skin will peel free like over ripe peach fuzz and the healing has to begin all over again.
I've wanted to brand myself for some time. A change of pace between scarification stints and a way to get a different look as I work on tattooing myself to help me mark time between the many different iterations of myself and stages of my life. The pain brings an acute awareness that helps me cut through the storm swells and confusion and voices and whorls and weirs of manic depression and schizophrenia. When your nerves are screaming out at you, it can drown out the noise. When you can touch something concrete and constant it becomes a reference stone and constant reminder of your human elements, your and everyone else's pains and joys and emotional lives. It allows you to access a reality that opens doors of sympathy and empathy you otherwise would not be able to see or understand. It clear cuts a path to direct needs and functions. In small doses, that pain is invaluable and a joy with incredible utility. In large doses it is a nightmare.
When the deep fryer began to fall over, time did not slow down. I knew my two cats, rescued from negligent homes some years ago, were both in my efficiency kitchen with me, waiting for me to toss a little food on the floor for them to nose and paw, maybe eat, maybe pass on. The fryer was in the same space it'd occupied since I bought it and first began using it. Hundreds of times. This time, whatever balance struck that slowly shifted through the years made its final move. It began to fall, my cats looking up at me, and I threw my hands out at full speed to stop it. From all of the previous times I'd dropped bowls, or a bucket slipped off of a shelf while I was filling it, I knew the cats wouldn't move until it hit the floor and I didn't have time to try to scare them out of the splash radius with words. The speech centers of my brain were an afterthought. All I could engage was "protect them!"
Weeks later I can understand why. I can't afford to take them to a veterinarian to treat them long term for hot oil burns, especially what would likely have been second to third degree burns over 50% or more of their little bodies. I would have had to put them down or take them to a vet to have them do it. The whiff, the scent, the lightest breeze of a notion of having to mercy kill them was enough to send me into action because they are two of my mates. My family in my outpost here in Pittsburgh as I build a life for myself, a single early thirties male permanently estranged from all family save for my immediate siblings, and even they not all as close as siblings are often assumed to be. They mean the world to me, no matter how often I bellyache about them keeping me up all night with their little paw paw games and wrestling with my feet and ankles with a little too much claw now and then. They're my shipmates that take care of the place while I am away and while I'm hurtling through the universe, trying to make sense of other people, and maybe stumble upon someone or ones to accompany me, in my hodgepodge, homemade, Tardis. My companions.
I lunged and the fryer moved along the shelf and slammed against the wall and 367 degree oil rolled up its side like water in a blender. Below, the skitter scratch of cat claws scrambling against floor boards reached my ears, my leading foot planted against the plastic tile to balance me. Relief washed over me knowing "they will be safe" as the sheet of amber oil hanging in the air began its descent over where the fryer basin used to be. Where my hands now were.
I snatched my left hand backward, my right still connected to the arm putting as much force as possible into the basin, now against the wall to drive my body backward. The oil sloshed over my right hand and, knowing I could not withdraw it without allowing the entireity of my torso to fall into the shower and shelf and further shake the ball of solar flare to catch the rest of its contents on my face, I pushed back and took a shower against the skin's hand.
The thump and tumble of my cats running away collided with the immediate shock of hot oil across my hand and wrist and once my body began traveling backward, the oil beginning to slap and clap against the floor, I began to raise my leg against the back splash. What splashed and dotted my left leg cooled enough as it dotted my pants to leave no mark. What landed in the bin turned around its base like a tsunamic rip tide, crushed against the basin's rear wall, curled around as sport, cameras flashing, snap, and teeth bared came for me.
Balanced, I tore my right hand away, the curling aftershock cresting. It spilled. The wave covered my knee and washed my shin and right foot and that was when a scream cut loose. I cried out. Prime and howl. I screamed to the skies as the last of it dribbled off of my toes.
The deep fryer, spun with the terror of my flash fried hand, fell backward and spilled the rest of its contents to the floor that I, loosed from protecting cats and certain further was easily, by miles, too far, could leap clear and land against the kitchen sink. I breathed hard for wasted minutes in a mental gridlock, hips perched on the lip of the kitchen sink, before I ran to the bathroom.
The cold water was turned to its maximum setting with the tub to shower knob turned to full shower. Water washed all over me and I held my paw up to the chill spray and only brought it down to rinse over every other part of the right side of my body that was vibrating at death levels. Sometimes when I lose my temper and cannot corral it I will fire off a punch into an inanimate object to pop off steam and that tingle returned is that tingle that tells you every part of your skin that was between flesh and bone and the rock and the hard place you found yourself in to bring ya to a point where the only release was the flood of endorphin and whatever other enzymes cover up disappointment and rage has died and maybe given up a fragment of solace to the rest of the mad house. That tingle, rushing over the right side of my body and the nerves shouting out for soft words brought me back to the point where I understood I could not put enough cold water on every part of me that needed it.
My leg continued to burn. For hours afterward. I was able to wash my arm in enough cold water, enough of it falling into the tub, as it scattered from the shower's head against my hand, to cool my foot. Second degree burns, superficial as superficial second degree burns can be, set in on my arm and foot as second degree burns ate into my leg, starved of cool.
I got out of the shower and pat dried myself.
Skin came off in palm sized chunks.
It stuck to the towel.
I got back in the shower.
Skin clogged the drain.
I cried. I grabbed a bar of soap and rubbed. More skin came loose. It stuck to the walls of the shower. It stuck to my own face. It caught in my chest hair and groin. Tendrils drifted from my beard. I shouted "no!" I shouted "this is not happening" over and over and over. For many seconds it was all I could say. Every part of me felt like it was coming unseamed.
I was in shock for two days.
I didn't know what to say to myself or anyone else. I didn't know what to believe. I slept. When I woke I did not move. While I stayed frozen I tried to sleep until I did. When I was not sleeping I tried to. When I was sleeping I waked with a recurring nightmare every handful of minutes I could forget. Terror stricken. It was not real. I was in shock.
Waking, I looked at my hand and it was not mine. It was a raw thing. It stank. The smell of it was raw meat opened two days too late. Sour and slimy and sticking to everything it touched. Blood oozed and wept from its every divide. It was a scene in that movie that you cannot watch start to finish because it turns your stomach just enough to make your eyes cross and tinfoil rattle in your mouth until you are too sick to stand. For some time, waking and looking at it and having its smell fill my nostrils so close to my face and knowing that if I lifted my blanket enough to look down at my leg I would see a sea monster colored in a sickly greenish yellow full of lint, cat fur, exudate, and blood scab as far as light can carry, I would sweat and convince myself if I just lied still it would heal itself fine like a rug burn.
On the third day I threw up. 60 some odd hours in bed hydrating with only a two litre of Barq's root beer I happened to toss over there before deciding to make food before bed took it's toll. Waking up the third day for the twentieth time in that period, pain spiking, and the odor of raw flesh beside my head, unable to shake it away and unable to cut it off, took its toll. I wretched.
Rolls of heaves began working their way along my spine. I began to scramble with my good left hand to make sure my face was pointed toward empty floor space instead of mattress, pillow, or wall. I could not walk. Wherever the projectile went, it had to be somewhere I would be able to lie near without getting it into open wounds. I succeeded and ralfed, sickened by the furious turbulent grotesquery of my own body parts.
On the fourth day I came to grips with what would become my new modernity. Without health insurance, there was no one to fix me except me. I tried to walk and succeeded. I pissed. In my own toilet. Deep brown syrup. I found my fridge. There was food, I walked to my sink. There was water. I drank and drank and drank. I pulled food and food and left arm's full of tupperware and placed on my night stand. I found my cubby of strange and sudden items and found my scarification kit and breathed a sigh. Relief, joy, love for the friend who came over prepared for a one time dual scarification incident I ribbed him for (coming over prepared) that he left with me. With a little improvisation I was able to repurpose the kit to cover the open wounds enough to return to bed on track to recovery instead of on rails to infection.
Days went by like barges trying to force their way over harbor reefs. The stench of my hand continued to get to me as I left it bare with the kit nearby. The flesh continued to sweat and the swelling did not go down. Slicing it off became an option. I could not sleep with any fidelity. I could not rest and when I was awake the pain I felt was more than anything near the throb I felt inside my skull when I fractured my jaw. It was more than anything I felt when I fell down stairs or was in my second car accident or slipped off of the odd side of a hand rail and landed on the concrete bordering the stairs beside a 21 foot decent from a porch to a sidewalk with a hill between us. I wanted to cut it off as the bare flesh continued to weep that slimy clear goo. Cut it off! Cut it off!
I wrapped it. I wrapped it. Healing began. The recurring nightmare, the recurring dream continued. I was able to make bandages and while it healed I was able to order in specialized products for attending to burns. I researched for days whiles my leg and hand and arm stuck to my bed sheets. Every time I tried to move, they stuck to me. Belief set. "If I don't move while I'm waiting for these products to arrive, there is no way it can get infected because it is sealed by the plastic fabric so further movement will only create more problems and possible amputation." I had to figure out a way to urinate.
And I did. Three weeks in. My neighbors stopped by to see if I was okay. I still could not leave the bed for any sort of extended period. Dropping my burned hand below my heart produced an incredible throbbing pain the likes of I have never felt. To put the sensation in perspective: do you know when recommendations say to keep the limb elevated? Imagine that every time you are lying flat on your back that limb crosses a plain. Now imagine that plain is wherever your heart is located. Now imagine that every time that limb crosses south of that plain you instantly feel like it is about to burst apart as though a truck tire, connected to a 3/4 ton truck, is rolling over it and if you do not raise it above that plain IT WILL BURST INTO HAMBURGER MEAT. Yes. That. Now imagine that while you are trying to find a comfortable way to lie in bed and sleep. Now imagine that happens instantly for 18 days to everything from your elbow up and your knee down!
Coming in to something close to normal. I hope that was coherent. How else can we survive?
The pain remains. It feels indescribable though I've done my best.
People you knew before look at you differently. More so than your scarification. They look at you as though there is something contagious about you. The root of your being is love for animals. Perhaps they should.
As I've healed and become a human being again through the last weeks, looking at my hand and my leg, I almost feel like I am wearing a human costume. All of the skin was flash fried off of my hand save for my palm. The skin underneath each one of my digits and my palm is original and up to date. Looking at it, seeing it clinging to the rest of my flesh, it is out of place. I want to peel it off and it will not go. It will not go away. There is no transistion between the old, the original, and the new. It is stark. If you shake my right hand you will feel the transition in the form of many tiny spikes where the original skin meets the new. Where the rough and weathered meets the baby smooth; fingers crossed bounds, hands clasped in a firm grasp.
I still find pieces of skin around my apartment. It is disgusting. It is revolting. Vomit climbs through my body and I know I have to pick that part of me up and put it in a garbage can and it is... .... .... ..... .......................... I know I can go on. I know I will. I know I have to. It hurts.
It hurts.
It hurts.
It hurts.
Fuck. It hurts so much and I know I have to go on and it just fucking hurts so much. I want to shake it off. I want to be able to shake it off. The pain is ................. ugh. I know I'll beat it. I think part of the pain it gives me is that I didn't have a choice. And now I have to wear a permanent and exceptionally visible reminder of how I didn't have a choice through the 24 years of my life my Dad destroyed myself. I broke away from that, finally. It took cutting my face apart to see. To finally split his noose. Now I have to wear the scars of chance and love right along with them. It hurts. It fucking hurts. It wasn't supposed to be this way. I have to wear it. I will and have and will continue to do so.
I am happy to close this chapter. If I didn't talk about it I would still find myself living in it months, maybe years, from now.
At least now,
at least now,
we can get back to comedy, true tragedy (instead of misfortune), and stories untold in fiction. Close this book and open a new. Carry on, soldier. How many times do I have to change? How many times do I have to be changed? People already look at me so many different ways from what I am. And they will look at me differently again.
Ever becoming.
We have been patient. We will still.
You thought you new hell. It was one of many.
It was a long month. Come back home, darling. The worst is over. You may have set a new ten. Many, most, if not all, is lost in translation, however- -there's still a lot of work to do. Do not quit on me and I will not quit on you.
/////Bjork x Deathgrips - "
Thunderbolt" fourteen birth of the painted dinosaur. Molt.
