The Last Goodbye

I decided to let go of my belly ring for the second time in two years to finally set free the mushing flesh within the wound from the body jewel’s soft sawing mercy.  I’m beginning to think that, apparently, some of my flesh would really be pouring out red-tinted-flesh-colored ectoplasm from the wound…the bottom pierce to be exact, which is just above my navel…if I keep “torturing” myself like this.

I thought it has completely healed after more than six months; it’s been weeks now since the last time I felt pain down there.  I realized that I could have been doing something wrong when the pain shot back three days ago, and that everytime I look at my belly to check on the ring, to my surprise, I’d find this odorless, often transluscent mucus on top of the belly jewel that already hardened.   The other day, I found flesh: an itty-bitty lump of what looked to me like inverted flesh has formed around the bottom pierce.  Oh, its raw flesh all right.  It was watery, had very little blood, soft to the fingertip…and then the idea of suddenly seeing my innards gush out like water from a faucet scared me bleepless.

Yesterday morning, I gave the wound a rest, and by the time I came home from training and tried wearing my belly ring again, I said to myself that it can’t be done anymore.  The exitwound closed more quickly than expected, and I no longer have the courage (not to mention the right amount of threshold of pain) to pierce it again as I did the the first time it closed.

So there I was, lying half-naked on my bed, contemplating and recalling the days from the time I first let go of my belly ring to the time I decided to have my belly pierced again after six months.  I may be feeling 80% reluctant of losing it but the remaining part of me is glad.  My days of belly-and-ring checking is over.  

The wound still stings if i touch it or if I contract my stomach too much, but at least I know that the pain would cease in a couple of days.  I find consolation in the thought that if I’m still be wearing that sexy, sexy little thing on my navel, I don’t know when the pain would really, truly stop.  

I’m very tolerant with pain, but I just can’t live with the same pain forever.  They’re like…pent-up longings for fatherly love from childhood…or a grade of 66 for low quality work…or utter indecisiveness as to whether one should or shouldn’t stay with their three-year-long boyfriend when he failed them for the umpteenth (and still counting) time.

Besides, I’m better off nursing a facial cut done by accident than nursing a bleeding navel done by a really foolish and prideful heart.  I had to let go because pain should go away as it always does.  Slowly, one at a time.