bring the pain

When I think back on my adolescence, when I stopped taking growth hormone, I often wonder why I hated shots so much. Why I never got used to them. When I learned to give them to myself, it made it worse. I couldn't go back to letting my mom do it, but I couldn't do that to myself either. I'd literally sit in bed for hours, just holding the syringe. 

A few times I did it eventually, but then I just gave up. I was very depressed. I was lonely. Being a little taller wasn't going to make any difference. Finally, no more godawful needles.

I've been giving myself injections every day for the last seven years or so. They're not awful. They sting sometimes, but jesus fucking christ, it's not that big of a deal. I don't understand why now I can look at the minor pain of getting a shot and shrug. It's annoying, but not something to cry about. I was almost forty, when I discovered that ability to do things that I didn't feel like doing. 

I don't understand how I was so bad at giving myself a shot, or anything else for so long. I still procrastinate a lot. When I'm depressed, I'm a failure of a stoic, but I always give my shots, and there's no hesitation. Just get it over with. Minor pain like that just seems trivial to me now, but I don't understand why. The instinct is there to take credit for it, but I'm skeptical that it has anything to do with me on a cognitive level.

I am still mortified by emotional pain. I avoid all sorts of risks, when I might get hurt emotionally. As I write about giving myself shots, I couldn't help but notice the correlation. I'm still a crybaby when it comes to emotional pain, missing out on valuable aspects of life, for fear of being hurt. Answering why feels all too easy. It hurts a lot. I'd be a fool to pretend I can just take it. I won't be fine. 

I wonder about the parallels there. It's not like I haven't experienced pain, and just need to get used to it. I was getting shots every day for years. As a kid, I never got used to it. Life has been all sorts of painful, and getting used to it? I'm not sure I'm entirely surviving it. 

Risk making it worse? Yeah, that seems like a bad idea. I am acutely aware that I lack the support structure, internal and external, to absorb much of the pain life can throw at me, but eventually it can all get so miserable, we might as well take a risk. How could hell be any worse. Of course it all goes wrong, and we get to find out.