10 modernish-day torture methods my illness (unoriginally) stole
I’d put a content warning of torture and pain here but you know what? You’re MADE of torture and pain, aren’t you?
Anyhoo.
I was listening to a podcast about Guantanamo and thought, hey!
That sounds relatable.
Which is pretty fucking rich, coming from an overprivileged white lady currently typing you from a cozily decorated apartment, feet resting on a heater, a fridge full of food to the left and indoor plumbing to the right.
I also can’t deny, my body has RIPPED OFF its most devious torture methods.
(Yes, this is a problematic hot take in godawful taste, but can we acknowledge the total lack of originality??)
Ahem. For your consideration in Things My Body Does To Me, No Guantanamo Needed:
“The Tucker Telephone”
Courtesy of the Arkansas State Prison Farm in the 60s, this rewired phone from hell zaps and burns victims right in the privates. Exactly like the searing vulvodynia attacks that make me shriek in agony. In public.
Medical Experimentation
Prisoners make excellent test bunnies. Apparently so do chronic illness patients. Does anesthetic work on you? Me, neither. Pretty common in feebs.
Sensory Overload
Neuroinflamed brains can’t filter sound, light, and activity, so we might as well be under bright strobe lights listening to heavy metal and dance pop while wearing itchy wet clothes while trying to hold a conversation with 12 people.
Learned Helplessness
Unpredictable “adverse stimuli” with no apparent trigger will make victims give up and no longer even try to control their circumstances. (Fun fact! Technically this is an “unlearned” behavior, not a learned one. In other words, humans innately believe they have a degree of autonomy and efficacy in the world, at least until that sweet summer child is thrashed out of them.)
Force Feeding
Torturees get everything from food to poison shoved down their gullets, sometimes to make them sick, sometimes just to keep them alive. Often the main goal is just… bloating. Bloating? I’ve looked pregnant for the last 9 years (not a typo). 99% of food poisons me, and sometimes I react to “safe” food anyway.
Sleep deprivation
Where you’re shackled into uncomfortable positions that keep you awake. Something my neck and hips do to me ALL THE DAMN TIME. My favorite is the knifelike pain between my shoulder blades if I’m not in juuuuuust the right position and don’t move there it is okay FREEZE.
Enemas
My guts suck in the other dirction, but here’s looking at everyone who can’t do number two without the magic water bag.
Oxygen Deprivation
New studies show ME/CFSers exist in a constant state of hypoxia. (Flashes white lady gang sign to completely inappropriately signal how tough we are.)
Pressure Points
Yawn, you guys make it too easy.
Tooth Extraction
Wait, we can get this for FREE? (Sorry. I’ll excuse myself to hell.)
Water Cure
This is just forcing someone to drink water until they get sick, which is a fun trick my body picked up lately—making me parched to the point of chugging my way to electrolyte imbalances.
Cramped confinement
Basically, put a person in a box. It’s claustrophobic and makes one really effing sore. But why bother with a box? My already-sore body loves to stiffen into whatever position I’ve been in.
Ego Death
Essentially, break someone of their own identity—you know, like my sense of self as a driven, can-do, hardworking, quick-witted masterful leader who showered on a regular basis.
Restricted Diets
Yep. They do blow significant ass, don’t they?
Hot and Cold Torture
I’m mostly freezing, with a bit of overheating thrown in for variety.
Isolation
I’m extraordinarily lucky to have a supportive family, kickass friends, and a community I feel a part of both in my hometown and in various patient groups.
I often also feel there is no way to translate constantly going through life in a sub-functional state, especially to everyone who isn’t counting up to 4,000 steps, restricting 99% of foods, pacing activities, juggling the inanities of the medical system, and doing it all while feeling like hot garbage.
There’s just no frame of reference for this wierdness.
I know many painlets and sicklets have less to no social support—which is part of why I started this site. Isolation is quite possibly the worst torture we face.
The toughest thing about torture is that it can be layered. I could do all of this in a Tuesday. And the second worse thing? That it just goes on—year after year.
One thing that keeps me going is a sense of survival. “If you are alive, all things are possible.” Meaning, a cure. Sudden miraculous remission. Or just feeling better enough to eat a cinnamon roll. I will not deprive my 50 or 60 or fuck it even 90 year old self of a chance at living life untortured (or cinnamon rolls). I believe we get ONE. One life to do it all.
I’d love to close with something saucy like, “so bring it, bitches.”
But c’mon. This is torture we’re talking about.
So instead, I’ll think of the humans throughout history who have lived through just the fucking worst. And not lived. Either way, endured. Because with one life, what else can you do?
Endure.
While writing cringey blog posts about how torture is tantamount to #feeblife. Hello? You know they used to saw people in half and drag them under ships and stuff don’t you!?
Ahem. We even must endure ourselves and that nagging voice that—
I did not—
ENDURE. (Bitches.)
