The Irresistible Pain

I find that there are two categories of pain, mostly. First, there's the kind that's bad and that lets you know unequivocally that you should stop doing whatever caused the pain. The other kind, which is what I'm facing at the moment, stops just over the border into the painful side of itching. You can push that pain further along until it becomes the bad kind, but there's a long road between here and there that I often can't resist playing in.

The most common way that this starts for me is when I absent-mindedly push a folded piece of paper or flattened straw against my gumline. I push more and more until it bleeds, and somehow, the pain is satisfying. Today, I have a pimple growing under the skin just at the bottom center of my lower lip. Actually, it's slightly to the right of center. I cannot stop biting and scratching at that sucker. The pain from it crosses rather quickly into the bad area, but I still can't leave it alone. Part of the reason that I'm being so dogged is that I want it to develop and come out already, but part of it is also the few seconds of satisfying pain.

Today is not a good day for me to make good impressions on the people that I meet out in public.