PLAYING WITH FIRE, or [how human hearts hurt]

Sunburn is a good example of a first-degree burn.

You don’t really feel anything when the sun is scorching your skin. It’s only a few hours later that the realization sets in, and you just know that that patch of skin is going to hurt tomorrow.

First-degree burns are red and very sensitive to touch...These burns affect the outer-layer of skin, causing pain, redness and swelling.

You walk around for the next few days with one eye kept open just in case anything is out to get that tender piece of red skin. All you have to do is hover one hand over it and you can feel the heat seething out of it. That’s one angry stretch of skin, and you know you better not upset it any further. Some (marginally smarter) people put gauze over the burn. The rest of us keep our arms sticking away from our sides and our hair from our faces.

Protect the burn from friction and pressure.

Let’s not go into detail about what to do when your backside (am I allowed to say Bee-yoU-Tee-Tee?) gets sunburnt. Let’s just say that that’s the kind of problem you really don’t want to be faced with (but what were you doing baring your bottom in the sun anyway? Skinny dipping? Pretending to be a hotdog?). But that’s just the first few days.

The next part is scary. It can even be messy. But it is also agreed that this part can be fun. The skin darkens, goes slightly grey, then begins to peel. You go crazy and rub it off, piece by tiny piece, to reveal the raw, red skin underneath. You might’ve expected this new skin to look like baby skin; pale and smooth. Instead, it’s red and shiny and—dum dum dum—numb.

Relax. You’re going to be okay. That red and shiny skin will heal further (but not before becoming tender and painful all over again) an in a little while you’ll be all better.

Second degree burns are a different thing altogether. There’s blistering and singed flesh. The skin oozes clear liquid and is a bright, (very) angry shade of red. Beneath the skin surface, hair follicles die and sweat glands shrivel up. As time passes, blood vessels are damaged—blood flow is cut off and the burn escalates to the third degree.

Second degree burns hurt; a lot. Sometimes it’s enough to send a person into shock, and shock in turn is sometimes enough to kill people. So you could die just from the pain. That’s how bad it is. I’d try to illustrate it, but some things are best left to the imagination—on the other hand, let’s imagine your arm is on fire (even if it may no longer be on fire); your heart is pumping erratically and your brain can only garner enough sense to scream or groan in pain. Besides the pain and the scream, your brain also happens to have enough sense left to smell the awful stench of burning hair and skin. It smells like death. Even if you’re not dead yet.

Burns of the third degree are very curious things. According to the BSRC (Burn Survivor Resource Center), unlike the first two burn degrees, third-degree burns are white. They’re blanched like that because there is no blood in that part of the body. The flesh is not only damaged, it’s practically cooked. And the weirdest part is that third-degree burns, apparently, do not hurt. Sure, third-degree burn victims get shock too; but that’s from the messed up blood flow.

All you get to feel is a tingly sort of numbness. All you get to gain is a lifelong scar.

First Degree Burn

Second Degree Burn

Third Degree Burns

All of this is interesting enough. But I didn’t put it up just to warn people of the dangers and consequences of playing with fire. I did all that because as I was reading about these things I thought about the way that the heart hurts. I thought about how we hurt similarly whether physically or emotionally. How different things affect us to different extents. How sometimes we end up scarred. How some people end up dead.

There are a lot of simple enough problems in life that place us under heat; but the more complicated ones burn. The simplest of these complicated things are like first-degree burns. The symptoms may start off as subtle disturbances in our otherwise happy lives. Eventually we realize something is wrong, and the heart knows it’s in for a rough ride. You know you’ve already gotten hurt; it just takes time for you to start mincing the pain. When it does come, we’re careful not to aggravate the problem further. We nurse our wounds and eventually, we harden. We become tough and insensitive to similar problems and we assume it’s over. It takes time for that stone-heart to flake away, and when it does we get hurt a little bit by this vulnerability, but we get better. Don’t play with fire, is the lesson of this wound.

There may be more difficult situations than that.

With second-degree burns you’re singed and you’re terrified. It takes more than just you to solve this problem, and even with help you’re bound to come out of it with a few broken things—broken hearts, broken spirits. Important things. Sometimes you don’t come out of it at all. It’s when everything’s rushing at you all at once and you run out of ways to deal with it. The body runs out of blood or breath, the heart runs out of hope.

Third-degree burns are a different kind of dying. It’s parts of you losing blood, losing hope. Losing color and function and feeling. The fire consumes cell by scorched cell and you’re awake and conscious to experience it. The worst part is hurting and not feeling any pain. Losing and feeling no regret. You don’t have to die to hurt this badly. It doesn’t have to hurt at all to be wounded this deeply. The lesson here is that there most certainly is a deeper death than dying. This is the kind of death present in the hollow eyes of people who lose everything. This is the kind of death that clamps its teeth on their skin and their flesh and their hearts, and sets it on fire.

This is why they say tears burn on your cheeks.

This is how the human heart hurts.