For the past two days I have barely moved. My back started hurting on Monday but I chose to carefully ignore what I saw as a familiar sign to my back checking out. Sure enough, Tuesday morning came and my back spasmed as I tried to talk to my car to head to the gym. I ended up curled up on my front porch with both of my parents standing next to me trying to figure out what to do. Within 5 minutes, I was laying on a couch on top of a heating pad that also massages your back. So began a day of nothing but watching movies and ingesting as much in the way of ibuprofen as my body could stand. I woke up this morning and called into work immediately. If I don't get fired in the next couple weeks it will be a miracle with all the work I have missed so far this year from vacations, sickness, and now my back.
I find that the what is making me craziest is that I am completely vulnerable. I have to rely on someone else virtually all the time. In case you hadn't figured it out yet, I am terrible at letting other people truly take care of me. It makes me feel useless. I know I should be able to accept help, and I do sometimes, but when I am literally unable to stand up straight or walk more than a foot without serious pain...it makes it hard to do anything. I have had to rely on my family to carry things for me, make my meals, put movies in for me, charge my phone, and bring me pain meds. They have been wonderful, and I hate every minute of this. I can't do housework, I can't go to work, I can't do anything I normally do. I am stir crazy and super vulnerable and I am crying a lot. You try dealing with this kind of pain and tell me you wouldn't cry.
On top of which, I find that because I can't be engaged in any real activities, I am thinking far too much about things that are not necessary to think about. I am thinking about how much I miss friends, how much life is changing, how lonely I am, how guys still don't ever seem to see me as a woman (even when I am dressed up) and how I just want to feel loved.
My friend, Heather has been phenomenal (she always is), and she has been a constant source of encouragement these past two days. She and I are so much alike it is scary, and she has been trying to keep my spirits up and help me to not wallow in my frustration over both this pain and my situation in life. I was reminded by her today of a quote that I love from A.J. Jacobs where he talks about how we need to "embrace the suck." The first time I read that I fell in love.
Doesn't it just make you smile in spite of yourself? Yes, the day might be lousy. Perhaps you want to throw your spine out a window and become a jelly fish. Perhaps you want to run away someplace where you can hide and lay in a hammock until someone truly wants to seek you out and find your heart. Perhaps you are just tired of being alone. I am all of these things and more, but I am going to try to follow Jacobs' example and go for it. Tonight I will embrace the suck and tomorrow I will do the same. I will make the best of the bad, and somehow, this will all work out.
In the meantime, find the joy, my friends.
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