EQUUS (Life without skin)

Pain
Is sometimes dull, dirty and dramatic.
At others,
Pure, brilliant and beautiful.
When, like the razorcut we don't feel until we see the blood,
it comes unanticipated
and hurts all the deeper for that.

There are people walking this world without skin. Emotional skin. People who, due to childhood trauma, genetic predisposition, abuse...you name it, never learned to regulate their emotions the way most people are able to.

Do you remember the worst moment of your life? The gasp, the soulstab, the agony and the feeling it would never end? The day the world broke? Then the numbness came, and you learned to adjust to a new, fractured world.

Now imagine that every time something bad happens to you, it's that intense all over again. Intense and unabating. There are some people who walk this world without skin. They often end up hiding and coping by making their worlds as safe and unintrusive as possible. They get called weird or disordered.

Emotional dysregulation is a bitch, to put it mildly. And it's almost impossible to describe to someone who hasn't experienced it. Fortunately, there are tools one can employ to manage it. Learning them is hard work, but well worth the effort. - Niki McQueen