How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love the Pain

That feeling you’re supposed to get right before you freeze to death–the one where it’s pleasantly warm and comfortable all of the sudden–is similar to the one you get when you finally accept the torture of working in an office every day. Of surrendering to the reality that, yes, you have to be somewhere at a certain time, at a place you don’t like, surrounded by people with a decidedly bovine presence (most of whom somehow get paid more than you ever will).

And yet, once you do decide to fully embrace that feeling of freezing to death after fighting so long against it, clutching to yourself for warmth and chattering your teeth to ensure you still even have use of your faculties as though mother nature (a.k.a. the capitalist system that requires you to make money in order to “live” while barely experiencing anything) isn’t coming for you, the torment can suddenly feel like gratification. You might even start licking it up, baby, as Veronica from Heathers would say. Because the best way for survival in Midtown–the ultimate metaphor for American life–is to treat agony as ecstasy, pain as pleasure. Like sexual cutting.