If there was one thing in this world impossible to explain accurately to someone, it was your own pain. You could try. You could try to liken it to something, but it was never accurate. All those lovely well-meaning people who asked how he was doing, he never had the heart to tell them he wasn't doing well. He always just said he was okay. He never said 'Fine'. He was never 'fine', and they knew he wasn't. 'Okay' was sort of that suspended place in between reality and fabrication that you could place your pain where people eased off from you to release you from the burden of trying to explain, and actually telling them the truth. Zed had spent a lot of time in the 'Okay' zone over the years. Right now, he wasn't really okay. He was in physical pain with his arm, he felt sick and tired, his head was messed up but not as much as it had been. Just lying in bed, feeling the comfort of it swallow him up, it was a relief.
"Denial, I guess. Or more accurately, there was probably a lot of reasons why, but that was the easiest one to feel. I was weighed down, and it's hard to be rational when you feel like that. When they told me I had a reactive test, it just felt like when I thought no more bad shit could happen to me, that goes and happens. Every traumatic thing that happens to you, you get knocked down completely by it. But every time, you never quite get up the same after it. Every thing takes a piece of you, until you start to feel like there's nothing left of you inside. Like when you break a vase and try to glue it back together. It's all a disjointed pieced together weak reconstruction that is missing pieces and chipped, and has an innate weakness that you know if you knock it over again, that next time, you might not be able to put it back together. Sooner or later, it's no longer a vase and just a pile of broken pieces that can't uphold another repair." He went quiet, because it was about as close as he could get to putting his life into words. Even then, it still felt like no one would really get it. "No, he won't be my doctor. Riley's the Senior Attending in the ER, so you won't see him out of that unit. He's in charge. Alex will be my doctor. He's an Infectious Diseases specialist. He's good. He's Riley's doctor. Riley highly recommended him."
no subject
"Denial, I guess. Or more accurately, there was probably a lot of reasons why, but that was the easiest one to feel. I was weighed down, and it's hard to be rational when you feel like that. When they told me I had a reactive test, it just felt like when I thought no more bad shit could happen to me, that goes and happens. Every traumatic thing that happens to you, you get knocked down completely by it. But every time, you never quite get up the same after it. Every thing takes a piece of you, until you start to feel like there's nothing left of you inside. Like when you break a vase and try to glue it back together. It's all a disjointed pieced together weak reconstruction that is missing pieces and chipped, and has an innate weakness that you know if you knock it over again, that next time, you might not be able to put it back together. Sooner or later, it's no longer a vase and just a pile of broken pieces that can't uphold another repair." He went quiet, because it was about as close as he could get to putting his life into words. Even then, it still felt like no one would really get it. "No, he won't be my doctor. Riley's the Senior Attending in the ER, so you won't see him out of that unit. He's in charge. Alex will be my doctor. He's an Infectious Diseases specialist. He's good. He's Riley's doctor. Riley highly recommended him."