There shall be no pictures with this post. You’re welcome.
It can be entertaining (or interesting, or not, depending on your viewpoint) what inspires insight some days. Life is a fetid ground of putrid lessons waiting to be realized.
Some lessons are shockingly new, some are deeper explorations of something previously realized, and some lessons are graphic reminders of things already known.
This was one of those last ones.
I have had this spot on my upper, outer left thigh for years. Where spot = cyst. (A cyst is “in the body, a membranous sac or cavity of abnormal character containing fluid”, so basically a zit turned inwards that has set up home and hollowed out its own zit-cave.)
It has resisted all attempts to drain it. Okay, the efforts were grrr, stupid lump, apply squeezing pressure on either side and……nope, nothing came out.
Well, a week ago I got a tad testy and decided enough was enough. WARNING: upcoming content gets technically graphic. DISCLAIMER: this was not a wise way of handing it, but I am not always wise particularly when I am (failing at) dealing with emotional things and then allow those emotions to attack a weird problem such as this old damn cyst.
So I took a push pin to it to create a channel, shall we say, between the gunk inside and the world outside.
Tunnel created, I squeezed some more.
Nada.
GRRRR! ARRR!
Sigh.
Okay, whatever. Do I care? No. Heh. I’ll show you cyst, I’ll show you by not caring. Nahnahbllttthht. (In case you haven’t realized yet, this is a story of emotions, told through the smelly weirdnesses of body mechanics.)
Days go by. The spot reddens. Great, infection?
Well, not seriously, no (though it would have served me right given how I went about things), but it did get a classic “white-head” style of zitness happening.
So I exorcised that demon. The power of pressure compels you! The power of pressure compels you!
And ick came out. Old ick. Ick that had turned into curled lumps of thick goo that smelled like the worst, most pungent cheese gone wrong. (Yes, I smell the weird shit that comes out of my body, don’t you?) Pressure was applied until the blood flowed clear and free. Mwuhahahaha. Ahem.
Now proper healing has started. I may end up with a pockmark there (that tends to happen when the tissue becomes so used to a ‘foreign’ lump that its removal leaves behind a hole that does not fill) but the lump will be gone (I hope). The lingering embedded ick is gone.
Emotionally I have had, and bet most of you have as well, these cyst-like lumps inside me. Pockets of pain, misery, hatred, fear, that have balled up and walled themselves up inside of me. They have become part of my psyche, so ingrained that I rarely notice their presence. And when I do, and I try to do something about them, I am unsurprised when nothing changes.
Just this past week, I took one of those emotional cysts that I had previously lanced (the technical term for sticking the pokey thing into the ball of ick to release it into the world). It had become more noticeable of late, stirred up, connected back more directly to the “outer” world of my consciousness. So I applied pressure to it. Release happened.
And just like the wound on my leg, I will need to care for that tender place inside, make sure it heals well and cleanly, that it doesn’t fill back up with ick but remains clear, empty of what had been there. With emotional wounds it is helpful to pack them (i.e. put something healing into the empty space that was created with the lancing and draining) with something supportive and healing.
I am not recommending that everyone go out and lance their emotional cysts. Instead, realize that it is an option that exists and there are ways and better ways of doing it to make sure you end up better off than you were before. (I could have ended up with a serious infection given that I didn’t disinfect that pushpin; sometimes my foolishness knows no bounds.)
I have to say, getting that old crap out of me was intensely satisfying.
~Violet
The Abysmal Witch