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Description
Clipping my toenails in the middle of the night with a pair of scissors with only the glow of the night-light to guide me probably wasn't a good idea.
But when OCD calls, I must answer, and so I hunched next to my night-light armed with a pair of craft scissors, cuticle sticks, a nail file, and my little Swiss Army knife of a nail kit, like an illicit doctor. I used my left hand to steady my foot and held the scissors with my right hand. Toenails are harder to do than fingernails, and are thicker, so it can take a bit of twisting and wrangling to get in the optimum position. Once I achieved that sweet spot, I positioned the blades around the offending nail and squeezed them closed.
I failed to account for the torque, though. Once the blades clicked closed, the resistant force from the nail jolted the blade forward, right into the side of my left middle finger.
I remember I sort of paused, instantly processing the pain, the force of impact, the sharpness of the blade, everything. It couldn't be that bad, I supposed. It didn't even hurt that bad. Well, I was wrong. It wasn't necessarily painful, not to a masochist like me. But it was a radiating throb that seemed to go deeper than the epidermis.
My excoriation instincts took over, and I licked at the wound. I couldn't quite see how much blood there was in such low lighting, but judging by the metallic taste of blood on the tip of my tongue, it had to be a substantial amount. I got up off the floor, brushed the seat of my pants off with my good hand, and reached into my nightstand for my handy-dandy pack of Band-aids. I clicked the lamp on, fear of my mother noticing I was awake nonwithstanding, and assessed the wound.
Ooh. It was kinda deep, and bleeding a lot. I licked the wound again and figured I'd need two Band-aids, just in case. So I did, and went back to bed.
But I couldn't fall asleep. My anxiety kept me awake. I haven't cleaned those blades, what if it gets infected? How deep was it, anyway? Will it scar?
Maybe my anxiety was a blessing in disguise, because I rolled over again and clicked the lamp back on. It wasn't really surprising when the Band-aid was already red, blood oozing from the edges if I pushed down on it.
Maybe this was worse than I originally thought.
I left the safety of my bedroom and headed into the bathroom. I took off the ineffective Band-aids (you will be missed, comrades), threw them away, and ran the wound under the stream of the faucet. Instantly, the water turned into a generous shade of reddish-orange, and the first true strands of regret wormed into my chest, filling me with more anxiety. I really f-ed up this time, didn't I?
The clarity of the water running over the wound helped me assess it more fully. The surrounding area was purple, and the wound seemed deep. Really deep.
It must have been around this time when my mom woke up. She came into the room, groggy and irritated, and asked me what I was doing up. You see, her finding me nursing wounds in the bathroom at obscene hours of the night is kind of a regular thing for her. Nevertheless, she still finds it annoying, and I can't bring myself to disagree.
I don't remember exactly what she said, but it was a slew of annoyed interrogatives. I think I showed her the wound with an owlish look on my face. My emotionless, nonchalant wall was collapsing, and my mom's urgency and anger accelerated the inevitable. Blood dripped on the floor and I wrapped my towel around the wound, for only a second while my mom got the more heavy-duty stuff. I lifted the towel off and a rusty red stain sat on the pink fabric like a petulant child. What if I had to go to urgent care to get stitches? That place is closed at night, I'd have to go to the hospital. My mom would have to pay the medical bill, everyone would have to get up at this ungodly hour, what about tomorrow morning? Oh my god, what have I done, WHAT HAVE I DONE?
It was when I sat on the edge of the tub when the dissociation hit me like a Mack truck. Auras filled my vision, distorting my view. My hands started to shake, my heart started beating wildly, and I simultaneously felt as though I had too much oxygen and too little. My thoughts were nothing, save for panic. There weren't even any words, which is unusual for my usually fertile mind. There was just a heightened sense of anxiety that I had only experienced a few times in my life prior to that. My eyes felt moist, but I didn't have it in me to sob, or to say anything at all. It was almost as though my panic served to canceled the laws of physics, just for me.
My mom came in with a wound closure kit and patched up my middle finger with little adhesive strips and gauze, all in silence. I was too shell-shocked to say anything, until the procedure was over.
"Thank you."
"Mhm."
"I'm... sorry." Inevitable voice crack.
"Go to bed. And I don't want to see you up again."
"Mhm."
"... Good night."
"Good night."
This little episode, along with numerous others which shall not be documented at this time, serves to demonstrate something I've learned about myself. Not that I'm absolutely, abysmally stupid at times, though I already knew that. I learned that I dissociate in time of extreme stress. And I mean extreme stress. Like the kind of stress I was under when I was in the doldrums of depression and we started working on a research project in English. Or the kind of stress I was under when I danced the line between talk and actually doing the deed of suicide. Dissociation is something that is common to all humans, but occurs especially in genderqueer people, otherkins, and the mentally ill. It's been described as feeling like you're not in control of your own body, like you're watching your life play out in front of you in a cinema. I have to agree. Personally, it feels like an impact has knocked my own consciousness out of me, left to float behind me until I find myself again. However you slice it, dissociation is an out-of-body experience that doesn't feel particularly pleasant-- once you regain your feelings, that is. For me, an autistic with an anxiety disorder and depression, I think it's a defense mechanism. Like how all humans experience shock in the wake of trauma. The human body would rather you feel nothing at all than experience the mind bending pain you'd suffer otherwise. That kind of stress can drive a person insane, or kill them, from what I've heard. After experiences like the aforementioned, I kind of believe it.

The writer proceeded to enter her room, hunch over the night light once again, and buff her nails. Why? Because she's right bloody idiot.

Description
Clipping my toenails in the middle of the night with a pair of scissors with only the glow of the night-light to guide me probably wasn't a good idea.
But when OCD calls, I must answer, and so I hunched next to my night-light armed with a pair of craft scissors, cuticle sticks, a nail file, and my little Swiss Army knife of a nail kit, like an illicit doctor. I used my left hand to steady my foot and held the scissors with my right hand. Toenails are harder to do than fingernails, and are thicker, so it can take a bit of twisting and wrangling to get in the optimum position. Once I achieved that sweet spot, I positioned the blades around the offending nail and squeezed them closed.
I failed to account for the torque, though. Once the blades clicked closed, the resistant force from the nail jolted the blade forward, right into the side of my left middle finger.
I remember I sort of paused, instantly processing the pain, the force of impact, the sharpness of the blade, everything. It couldn't be that bad, I supposed. It didn't even hurt that bad. Well, I was wrong. It wasn't necessarily painful, not to a masochist like me. But it was a radiating throb that seemed to go deeper than the epidermis.
My excoriation instincts took over, and I licked at the wound. I couldn't quite see how much blood there was in such low lighting, but judging by the metallic taste of blood on the tip of my tongue, it had to be a substantial amount. I got up off the floor, brushed the seat of my pants off with my good hand, and reached into my nightstand for my handy-dandy pack of Band-aids. I clicked the lamp on, fear of my mother noticing I was awake nonwithstanding, and assessed the wound.
Ooh. It was kinda deep, and bleeding a lot. I licked the wound again and figured I'd need two Band-aids, just in case. So I did, and went back to bed.
But I couldn't fall asleep. My anxiety kept me awake. I haven't cleaned those blades, what if it gets infected? How deep was it, anyway? Will it scar?
Maybe my anxiety was a blessing in disguise, because I rolled over again and clicked the lamp back on. It wasn't really surprising when the Band-aid was already red, blood oozing from the edges if I pushed down on it.
Maybe this was worse than I originally thought.
I left the safety of my bedroom and headed into the bathroom. I took off the ineffective Band-aids (you will be missed, comrades), threw them away, and ran the wound under the stream of the faucet. Instantly, the water turned into a generous shade of reddish-orange, and the first true strands of regret wormed into my chest, filling me with more anxiety. I really f-ed up this time, didn't I?
The clarity of the water running over the wound helped me assess it more fully. The surrounding area was purple, and the wound seemed deep. Really deep.
It must have been around this time when my mom woke up. She came into the room, groggy and irritated, and asked me what I was doing up. You see, her finding me nursing wounds in the bathroom at obscene hours of the night is kind of a regular thing for her. Nevertheless, she still finds it annoying, and I can't bring myself to disagree.
I don't remember exactly what she said, but it was a slew of annoyed interrogatives. I think I showed her the wound with an owlish look on my face. My emotionless, nonchalant wall was collapsing, and my mom's urgency and anger accelerated the inevitable. Blood dripped on the floor and I wrapped my towel around the wound, for only a second while my mom got the more heavy-duty stuff. I lifted the towel off and a rusty red stain sat on the pink fabric like a petulant child. What if I had to go to urgent care to get stitches? That place is closed at night, I'd have to go to the hospital. My mom would have to pay the medical bill, everyone would have to get up at this ungodly hour, what about tomorrow morning? Oh my god, what have I done, WHAT HAVE I DONE?
It was when I sat on the edge of the tub when the dissociation hit me like a Mack truck. Auras filled my vision, distorting my view. My hands started to shake, my heart started beating wildly, and I simultaneously felt as though I had too much oxygen and too little. My thoughts were nothing, save for panic. There weren't even any words, which is unusual for my usually fertile mind. There was just a heightened sense of anxiety that I had only experienced a few times in my life prior to that. My eyes felt moist, but I didn't have it in me to sob, or to say anything at all. It was almost as though my panic served to canceled the laws of physics, just for me.
My mom came in with a wound closure kit and patched up my middle finger with little adhesive strips and gauze, all in silence. I was too shell-shocked to say anything, until the procedure was over.
"Thank you."
"Mhm."
"I'm... sorry." Inevitable voice crack.
"Go to bed. And I don't want to see you up again."
"Mhm."
"... Good night."
"Good night."
This little episode, along with numerous others which shall not be documented at this time, serves to demonstrate something I've learned about myself. Not that I'm absolutely, abysmally stupid at times, though I already knew that. I learned that I dissociate in time of extreme stress. And I mean extreme stress. Like the kind of stress I was under when I was in the doldrums of depression and we started working on a research project in English. Or the kind of stress I was under when I danced the line between talk and actually doing the deed of suicide. Dissociation is something that is common to all humans, but occurs especially in genderqueer people, otherkins, and the mentally ill. It's been described as feeling like you're not in control of your own body, like you're watching your life play out in front of you in a cinema. I have to agree. Personally, it feels like an impact has knocked my own consciousness out of me, left to float behind me until I find myself again. However you slice it, dissociation is an out-of-body experience that doesn't feel particularly pleasant-- once you regain your feelings, that is. For me, an autistic with an anxiety disorder and depression, I think it's a defense mechanism. Like how all humans experience shock in the wake of trauma. The human body would rather you feel nothing at all than experience the mind bending pain you'd suffer otherwise. That kind of stress can drive a person insane, or kill them, from what I've heard. After experiences like the aforementioned, I kind of believe it.

The writer proceeded to enter her room, hunch over the night light once again, and buff her nails. Why? Because she's right bloody idiot.