And I'm frightened.

I always get frightened when the pain is something new, something I don't understand... and I sure as hell don't understand this.

Chills and sweating... had that before, but it's getting to ridiculous levels again.

My side aches. Horrid ache every time I sit down or stand up or try to walk.

And in my chest, in my stomach, there's this icy hurt, it feels like someone turned my insides into razor-sharp ice cubes and is stirring them around.

It's hard to breathe, hard to swallow. I've kept some food down - pea soup, mini-wheats, I tried some fast food but that was something of a mistake... it sounded so good, and then I tried to eat it, and back up it came.

I took sleeping pills last night. A double-dose. They left me all wired instead, and that was when the first round of ice-inside-me set in. When they finally wore off enough that I could stop twitching, I...

...was an idiot.

I had a St. Ides Special Brew sitting around. I drunk it, the whole damn thing. Felt SO good... until the buzz started to wear off, and now the pain and the ice are worse than ever.

I'm sitting upstairs on Deb's computer, typing, the heater going full blast. I'm sweating horribly, but I don't feel warm. My hips, my left side, my stomach, my pelvis, they all feel like someone is poking at them, punching them, using me for a kick-toy.

I'm seriously scared right now. It hurts in all the old ways and in new ones too. It hurts, and then it does other things, I hadn't remembered that there were things worse than simple pain, but gods, there are. My hands are shaking. My throat hurts.

...and I'm back from a run to the bathroom. Anything I eat literally explodes out one end or the other, it's not doing me any good in between. Blood. There shouldn't be blood involved.

Why the hell does this hurt so much? Why am I so afraid to wake up someone, to go to the hospital?

Oh. Yeah. Thank you, stupid little voice. You see, if I wake people up, drag 'em out of bed and make them take me to the hospital, if it turns out after all that trouble, that this is just withdrawals, or me imagining it, or something equally foolish... they'll hate me. I'll hate me. I won't get medical help ever again. Nothing, none of it, I'll be destroyed and blacklisted.

Which I know is bullshit, but you really wouldn't believe how convincing that little voice is.

And I'm scared to go alone. Any time something goes really wrong, I want someone THERE. I need someone there, someone to distract me when they slide the needles in, someone to remember the symptoms or problems that I in my fear and pain forget to mention, someone to reassure me, to look at me and feel my forehead and remind me that it's OK to be sick and get treatment, that I didn't do it on purpose, that I'm not somehow faking it, that it'll be ok.

I want all the things my mother never did for me. I want all the things Caleb did for me.

Part of this IS withdrawals, that's what sickens me. I know perfectly well that I've been on various vicodin/percoset/etc. drugs often enough recently that I am likely addicted. And that my body will do very odd things to try to get more. But... not this. It's never done this. This doesn't FEEL like withdrawals, but I can't help being afraid because I know that withdrawals are part of it.

I don't want to be addicted to ANYTHING, I don't want to live my life from pill to pill. I want them to figure out what the FUCK is wrong with me and fix it. I want to stop hurting. I want to stop throwing up. I want to stop feeling like shit, I want to stop believing the worst of myself, I want to stop being depressed and sick.

But right now, what I REALLY want is for someone to come with me to the hospital, to talk me into going, something, anything, just as long as I go.

Because there was a lot of blood, and I really hurt, and I'm scared, and I can't stop crying.

And I don't dare do anything about it.

And when you get right down to it, I don't know WHY I'm so scared, why I won't do anything. I don't understand. Where the fuck is the 'off' switch for this paranoia?