I don’t know when my love for pain began.

It started as a tolerance for pain. One that I learned from being punched and choked as a child by adults, or from various injuries.

I remember burning my hand on a firework when I was around 12. The short fuse moved faster than expected after lit. The hot white sparks sprayed my skin like molten metal. The only thing that soothed the pain was ice. I used one ice pack after another to hold the pain at bay.

I tried to sleep that night, but the aching, searing hot burning in my hand wouldn’t let me. No matter how much ice I used, it always melted until it was a temperature below my the pain threshold. I remember laying in bed, around 4 am, ready to get up and get another ice pack. I was exhausted from lack of sleep and terrified that I would wake in the middle of the night with my hand on fire.

My parents were absent most of the time, and I was repeatedly left to figure things out for myself. Including providing myself with first aid for my injuries. I couldn’t run away from the pain and I was too tired to avoid sleep any longer. At that moment, I decided to just “deal” with it. I removed the ice pack and felt the burning returning. I looked at my hand. It didn’t look that bad, and if I wasn’t looking directly at it, I wouldn’t have noticed anything wrong with it at all.

The pain in my hand grew as the relief of the ice faded. It burned just as badly as it did hours ago, if not more. Instead of getting better, it was getting worse. I remember tears rolling down my face, and I felt a loathing for life and experiences like pain. My breaths were short and sharp. I was nearly hyperventilating.

I lay down on my bed, being careful with my injured hand as I settled in to fall asleep. As I lay there, I tried to get my mind off of the pain. I tried to think about something else, anything else. I can’t tell you how long I lay there crying, angry, and full of regret.

In my agony, I became angry, which is still a common reaction for me. Instead of trying to ignore the pain, I focused on it. I focused every corner of my mind on it. I stared into the eyes of that fire and didn’t look away.

That’s when something miraculous happened. The pain ceased to affect me. I still perceived it. It still burned fiercely, but it was somehow outside of me. It was no longer the center of my attention, which is ironic considering that my attempts to ignore it had failed to remove it from my mind, yet my decision to experience it in full was successful. I was able to lie down and fall asleep in a matter of minutes with no issue.

I had learned that the pain I perceived was just an experience. It was to inform us of our environment, and after that information was received, it was no longer helpful. Pain became a thing that happens at various points in our life to different degrees. This was a lesson I drew on again and again.

I believe my dissociative disorder assists me in my method of tolerating pain. I’ve had dissociative seizures since as young as I can remember. These manifested from extreme trauma. Dissociative states are part of the 4F’s Model of Trauma (fight/flight/freeze/fawn). Trauma responses are triggered when the sympathetic nervous system is activated in times of danger.

Dissociation is an extreme form of the freeze response. In my case, I was too young to fight back, too young to get away, and there was no way to avoid it. What “it” is that I went through, I do not know. It all happened before I could form those kinds of memories. What I do know is that I have a very deeply embedded and extreme trauma response of dissociation that manifests as Psychogenic Seizures.

When I burned myself on that firework and learned how to separate myself from the pain, I was practicing a form of dissociation.

Now, I love pain.

I love diving deep into the abyss of dissociation when I experience it. The more I indulge in pain, the more I’m able to tolerate increasing levels of it. As I descend from one level of dissociation into the next, I detach my mind from my body. I experience the pain as something happening outside of myself.

There is peace in the places I descend to. It is calm there. Tranquil. My only objective is to be in that moment. To experience each sensation. To understand. Individual parts of my perception are fragmented, perceived individually and simultaneously, but are no longer connected into one single experience. My mind ceases to race. Things like fear, stress, worry, or responsibility no longer exist.

Exploring Limits

I look toward the future with excitement. I am blessed to have a safe person to explore this part of myself with. His sadistic desire to inflict pain is matched by my masochistic desire to experience it. Our demons dance well together.