My Abusive Relationship

On Friday I had my fourth session for getting my lovely tramp stamp removed. It was warm out, so I wore shorts to my appointment. Evidently I did for my last appointment as well.

As I was laying face down in the chair, waiting for my lower back to numb before the treatment started, the doctor walked in. He’s not very personable, but he took time after my last session to talk to me when I was alarmed that my back had blistered, so I thought maybe he was warming up to my Wisconsin charm. He asked me about my relationship status, so I assumed he noticed this fancy new bling I’m wearing (or else wanted to date me, even though I’m young enough to be his granddaughter). I told him I’d just gotten engaged. He then proceeded to ask me about my home-life, admitting that he noticed the bruises on my legs at this session as well as the last session.

Now, I think I’ve mentioned before that I seem to be getting a lot of bruises on my legs lately. I used to be convinced my KISA fought me during the night, but once I started paying attention to what was causing them, I realized I bump into everything. It doesn’t matter that the foot-board of our bed is in the same place it’s been for the last 5.5 months – I forget it’s there. The same goes for the table in the hallway. The couch. The counter. Yeah, we basically rearrange our apartment every day and my legs pay the price for this.

I gave one of those uncomfortable laughs and proceeded to explain how I’d just done Tough Mudder the weekend before to account for the two huge bruises on the inside of my legs. I didn’t even begin to tell him more about my clumsiness to explain the bruises from before, in fear of sounding like I was covering something up. The doc asked at the end of my appointment to send him a picture of it again if it blistered. I told him I thought the blistering last time was probably in part my own doing because of my backpack rubbing on it while I biked to and from work after the treatment and vowed to be more careful this time.

Well, immediately my tattoo blistered after this treatment. Yeah, it was pretty intense pain. But, that didn’t deter me from doing my 12 mile run on Saturday with my KISA (yep, he ran it all with me as well). We had a great run and chatted most of the way out. At the 6 mile marker we turned around and started heading back. At the 6.1 mile marker my KISA almost ran into traffic as the light was turning from red to green. You know how in the movies you see something happen in slow motion as the person reacts to it? I felt like that’s what happened here. I lunged towards him, at the same moment he realized what was happening and stopped. I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but I fell. Onto my back. (Again, I have no idea how that happened.) I immediately felt the excruciating pain coming from my lower back as I knew my blister was popped, without even needing to look at it. I ran in pain for the next mile before the aches in my legs made me forget about the popped blister on my back.

I treated it with Neosporin when we returned from the run and bandaged it up. It seemed to be healing nicely as I noticed that it didn’t even hurt during my massage on Sunday. Later that evening my KISA had lured me to join him on the couch after I’d been cleaning. Thinking I was being cute, I jumped over the back side of the couch. As I came down my back rubbed on the top of the couch and I began to howl in pain. Not only had I popped the regrown blister, but I’d basically skinned it raw. You could see all the dead skin in a pile on my back and it looked like my tattoo was bleeding. I again bandaged it up and put ointment on it, but it didn’t seem to make the pain any better.

As I laid awake last night, trying to go to sleep, but unable because I couldn’t get into a comfortable position without my back hurting, I realized that I am in an abusive relationship. With myself.