Sometimes Pain is the Only Way to Pleasure - Visitor's Story

by Guru
(Sydney, Australia)

Once working in Paediatric Emergency Department, I saw a girl 13 years old who had cut her arms. Just as a routine, I asked her why did you do this? She said, "That's the only way I can feel I am alive or else I feel very numb."

I thought what rubbish! She must have read it somewhere. How possibly can a 13-year-old mean that, but those words always stayed with me...

The other day I was walking on King street and I smelt a very pungent odour from somewhere which to be very honest, was very revolting but for some reason I felt happy smelling that odour. It didn't make sense at that time.

I came home thinking about this incidence, and then suddenly I remembered the same smell from a butcher shop which I used to hate. This butcher shop was in the same road as my house in Bangalore when I was young. But like most of us fortunate people, those days of my boyhood were very happy ones. So when I did smell this pungent odour, my brain connected it to that memory and that was the reason I felt happy.

Thinking more about it, I suddenly remembered the young girl's words "... this is the only way I feel anything, the only way I feel that I am alive."

Well, what she said was an extension of what I had experienced in the King street. I had good memories to which I could connect to, but that poor girl might have gone through so much pain at that young age, that all those memories might have been wiped off and her mind had shut itself from any outside feelings/emotions to protect her from further damage. So even pain was a welcoming sensation/feeling for her. Hence, she used to cut herself. By that pain, she actually derived a pleasure.

Now I feel sorry for her more than ever and to all those people who go through this...

Oh lord I pray to you, may never come the day when I have to feel pain to feel happy.

I pray to you, help me help those people who do have to feel pain to feel happy.

I pray my lord, to give me the courage, will and knowledge to try and help these people. To try and create at least one single memory in their lives that they never have to feel pain to feel happy.