Pain

We are masochists. No more. No less. Self-flagellation gives us immense satisfaction. More so, mental self-flagellation. It leaves us gasping with pleasure. That’s just the way it is.

It is more heavenly and infinitely more fulfilling to feel pain in the mind, pick at sore wounds and scratch at crimson scabs and count the welts and weals therein, and wince metaphysically, than to suffer the ignominy of bearing physical scars and the inconvenience of staunching free-flowing blood. Mayhap imagination has a role in this. After all, the brain can fathom and fabricate exquisite anguish in all its gory visceral detail.

Some of us hide it better than others. Those who don’t – those that flinch at their thoughts and gape in horror and scream in abject horror at the terrible scenes playing out in their head – we call delusional. Those that don’t react visibly, but still relish it all and grin whilst admitting to the enjoyment from derived ecstasy, we ostracize for non-conformity with our social mores; all the while caving in to a deep-seated jealousy of the outcasts, and in a perverse fashion, letting that very jealousy gouge fresh lacerations on the spirit. The satisfaction from this is silently borne; nurtured in solitude and adoringly stroked and stoked in privacy, all the while cloaked in an innocuous word or phrase that does no justice to the façade it provides.

Masks we wear, masks we discard, masks we exchange, and betimes we don’t know we do it. And when realization does strike, we hasten to strip one mask away, and replace it with another, glowing with satisfaction at how we’ve fooled our compatriots.

We pat the ego, feed the hubris, and tend to the braggadocio like long-lost children reunited, and smirk with self-indulgent mirth at having duped ourselves. And to add insult to serious mental injury, we caveat the process, naming it resilience and quick-thinking, using an indolent shrug for a gambit, wielding sarcastic wit as a shield, deploying indifference as a sophisticated ruse, and hurling barbed insults in a way-ward offensive.

But deep in the confines of our clandestine chambers and secluded alcoves, we let ourselves go – breathing deeply as we caress fondly the objects of our own damnation – those subliminal whips and rods and flails and cords and batons and prongs and whatnots that will hold us till next we return.