While Happy Friday is in full effect I also can’t escape myself. The day should have been a total success. Leafs win big and it’s time for the weekend…woohoo? Well it’s two Friday’s in a row where I punch myself in the head, but today can be considered a win whereas last week I felt like an abject failure.

How can you consider self harm a win? A reasonable question, allow me to explain. My emotional state is (for lack of a better term) all ahoo. My protective instincts kicked in to the extent that I was willing to crash and burn this new life I’m trying to build, a life that I am finally beginning take ownership of, to defend a concept on behalf of a colleague who is exceptionally capable of defending themselves. The situation stuck with me all day, and all day I wanted to hurt.

If you’ve never felt the urge to hurt yourself then… cool. It sucks. Let me attempt to find words for the experience. Words don’t really capture it but we’ll make do.

For me it’s a whole body feeling, a vibration or a tingle that is everywhere until you try to find it. Once I start to recognize the building tension it will pick a spot. It’s usually my fists, sometimes my neck or back. The full body vibe along with the relentless and specific pressure escalate each other. After not a long time I feel like my skeleton needs to leave my body. Like I want to tense up all my muscles and shoot my bones out across the room. (I actually think the concept has legs for a macabre/morose super hero who’s skeleton does all the work while the lump of flesh sits at home and feels sad.) I cannot do this, so the only relief is some other pain. I’d cut but that’s too hard to hide and I need to be a perfect good boy. Sigh.

When I was small I watched a movie where a martial artist would punch a steel plate all day every day to make his knuckles hard. This struck me as a valid plan and so for many many years I would ‘harden my knuckles’ on whatever was near, or just punch my fists together until my hands went numb. My wife found that upsetting so I stopped. That was about the time I started punching my head. I had to be discreet about it but it worked, I just bottled the feeling until I could be alone and wabam.

Now I’m surrounded by genuine people who care about me so it’s near impossible to hide when I am upset. I smoked three cigarettes today. Yuck. I spent all day wishing I could shoot my bones across the room. Nope. I struggled to find the patience that I need to be really useful at my job. And one time, not even very hard, I gave myself a shot to the ol’ noggin. I’m proud of that. I had restraint. I felt my feelings, I reflected on them and I learned about myself. It was really hard. Grown Ups is literally the worst game, but I’m in it.

Go Leafs.