This back thing is just strange.
I don’t normally complain about physical pain. It’s a thing I have. People don’t need to know about what’s going on with my body; they can’t do a thing about it, so why bother them? I actually don’t complain about much, I think, in comparison with most people I’ve met. I swallow it and bear it. I don’t go home from work or call in sick unless I can’t stand up. Heck, I don’t even take aspirin for a headache.
This back thing, though…
I honestly don’t know what to make of it. It’s not something obvious, like pulling it lifting heavy stuff, or being in a car accident, or something I can point at and say, “Ah! This was the cause! Must fix!” Instead, it’s invisible. It just hurts.
Okay, if you’re a medical professional, and you look at my spine, you can see the double curve that self-correcting scoliosis creates. (Such a pleasantly misleading term, that; self-correcting makes it sound like it’s fixed, no longer a problem, have fun!) Everyday people, though, can’t. So I feel a bit awkward on a bus when people are standing and I’m sitting; normally I’d get up and offer my seat to someone. Nowadays, I know darn well that if I stand on the bus with one hand clinging to a pole, I’ll be in severe pain by the time I hit the metro. So there I sit, looking like a perfectly normal woman, taking up a space that someone older or heavily laden could be sitting in.
Perfectly normal, except… I can’t stand for too long. I can’t sit for too long. I can’t use the pillows I used to use. I can’t sit through a movie without discomfort. Driving has me in tears after half an hour.
Every once in a while, I wonder what I did wrong. You know – did I slouch while reading in bed too often, was it my curling style, did the posture I developed in six years of ballet training actually force my spine into an unnatural position? Both my GP and my osteopath tell me that it wasn’t anything I did or didn’t do; they say I was born with the mild spinal curve, then naturally grew the opposite curve further down the spine to compensate for it. Still, though, I wonder… usually around the time I have to pop a couple of Secret Weapons.
The fact that I’m taking pain-killers at all is a huge tip-off that I’m admitting something’s wrong. Every once in a while at work I look at a colleague (who experiences periodic back pain) and say, “My back hurts.” He looks at me helplessly and says, “I know.” The fact that I’m actually saying it out loud is a huge admission on my part. The knowledge that he can’t do anything about it should stop me; it’s not his responsibility, he can’t help me, and both of us know it, so I really should not do it. It’s just… it feels so good to be able to say it out loud to someone. It helps, a little. Don’t ask me why.
I keep coming back to the “what did I do?” concept. I suppose it’s normal for most of Western society, seeing that we operate within a reward/punishment social system all our lives. If you do good things, you get good stuff. If you do something bad, you get back pain that tortures you while you look perfectly normal to others.
My time limit on ergonomic kneely chair has been reached. Now I have to go lie flat on the living room floor and stare at the ceiling until it’s time to go teach.
But I’m not bitter.
