I’ve been finding it harder to explain myself as of late. It must be a bad case of mental fog because it hasn’t quite lifted after two months.
I would loosely describe this piece as a reflective story, but it is entirely metaphorical for something I’m not ready to talk about just yet. Just like the adjective for my description, the formatting is also a bit loose.
This one is also a bit odd because we call it a “plaster” in the UK, but I’ll just let globalisation take the wheel!
Photo by Tara Winstead on Pexels
This is the heading for the aforementioned reflective story – huzzah!
If I rip it off quickly, the pain only lasts a few moments before dissipating.
If I try to take it off slowly, every step of the process has its very own element of pain.
The whole situation is agony. The slow run of the pull across your skin. Every single thread lifting from the surface against its will. In a bid to fight back, the adhesive wages war on you.
Tugging at every hair in its grasp. Maybe the gauze pad will try to take the scab prisoner – if you were too impatient regarding the healing process.
You end up with the same result in the end, no?
It’s just that one method gives you freedom almost instantly. The experience sending you through a blaze of pain before releasing you into the warm embrace of salvation.
The other drags you through every moment of pain you wanted to spare yourself from in the first place. Reminding you that there was another way that would have felt a lot worse, but for a much shorter period of time.
Elongating the experience of pain doesn’t always make it easier to manage. Either way, you still need to recover afterwards.
Why not choose to spend more time in recovery than in its preceding stage?
Desperate to escape, you contemplate picking at it. Eventually it would fall off on its own, right?
But another party decides to weigh in on the dilemma – beginning the process of peeling it away for you, bit by bit.
The adhesive begins the first battle of this war, but it’s more of an ambush.
NO! This wasn’t what I wanted!
I wanted to rip it off, but not like this!
On my terms!
My way, not yours!
To stop the power slipping from your control again, you take over the process.
I wanted this. Not you. I can’t control what you think or who you believe made this decision, but at the end of it all – this is my choice. My band-aid. And I’ll be the one to take it off.
Here we go…
The big closing statement that may have sounded better in my head, oh well.
Pain is unavoidable. But when you have control of how that pain is managed or distributed, please find it within yourself to get through the worst of it as soon as you can.. You may fear the pain, or what it will make of you, but sometimes its better than the alternative. Hiding the wound beneath a band-aid doesn’t heal it. It might provide that wound with protection for the time-being, but one day it will have to reveal itself, even if it hasn’t finished healing yet.
Once you have unveiled that pain once again, you can start to recover and return to the equilibrium you craved when you noticed the band-aid that was still attached.
Don’t be afraid to rip it off and spare yourself the lengthy agony – especially if it’s for the sake of others who don’t appreciate or understand what you are going through for them.
A Sign Off and a Call to Action
Thank you for reading my… thingy? It’s been a tough start to the year and I feel like I’ve returned to a familiar place in terms of mood and mindset. No matter how much we progress, it’s always possible to fall back in step with past versions of yourself.
Maybe I never really changed at all and it was all a great charade? Or it is possible I had grown, but something has caused me to regress to a place I didn’t want to return to?
More to reflect on, I guess.
Do you ever struggle to explain yourself? What sort of medium do you use to express yourself if words aren’t enough? How do you lift yourself out of a rut? Feel free to comment, email me or send me a DM on Instagram!
If you want to read more of my content, I have plenty of random posts on this website for you to engage with. From poems and short stories to essays and reflective accounts on a variety of topics, there will definitely be something to sink your teeth into on glassofaj.com!
I also stream games to Twitch as AnAppleAde! Feel free to swing by and say hi! I write a 4-line rhyming poem for my go live notification which tells you what games I’m playing! My new schedule is variable so who knows when I’ll go live?!
Until next time, stay safe and…
Stay Thirsty!
Ade
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