It is hard to write a blog post here and not go down some rabbit hole of some sort that leads me to places in my mind that I don’t want to share out loud. It’s one of the most difficult parts of keeping a blog. It’s not the writing that is hard. It is the *not* writing I’ll have trouble with. I am content to keep some things to myself and not share them about with others and leave some parts of me a mystery to the general public. Are we meant to have access to everything that a person thinks? This is a private blog; a journal of sorts, meant to be about my personal life and thoughts and so on, but there are limits to what I want in a public sphere. Some subjects are too political, some too personal, some too opinionated. Quite often I will write several paragraphs and realize that I would just as soon publish my checking account details as what I have written. I think it is in part to do with the nature of this blog, being a personal one.
There is more to it than that, though. When I started this blog in 2006, while I was living in England, and cycling about and exploring places, I had it in mind that those trips would make up a large part of the entries. Some personal items filled the space too, as I lived life, and our family grew, and changed. My joint pains became unbearable, the cycling tapered off, and our lives changed. We came to America, had some very bad experiences, and I stopped wanting to write, because I was trying to, but what came out was so bitter. We were held hostage to the situation though, and there was nothing we could do to change it. But it changed itself in more recent years, and I think I can finally say that most of the bitterness is gone, and I can get on with writing about my own life without feeling like the things I had bottled up had to burst out of me. I could really have done with a therapist or a friend at that time who was not also trapped inside of the situation. Well, I have always been too cheap to pay for someone to pretend to listen and finding friends with the patience to be of any help was impossible.
By the time the situation alluded to above changed, my joints were hurting so bad that my life was coming to a standstill. Every activity I got up to had to be forced. I could not walk without making the obvious steps of a man in pain, hunching over a bit, waddling side to side from the moment I got up till the time I went to bed. Even lying in my bed hurt. I woke up in pain, and not well rested at all. It’s been years since I woke up feeling well. In retrospect, I have been in this pain since I was a young teen, at least. I was plagued by it all along, thinking that body pains were just normal, and wondering how people could ever be athletic, and capable of doing so many of the things they did. Running has always been out of the question for me. I took up cycling because it allowed me a chance to coast, and the turning of the crank was always softer on my than the collision of my feet against the pavement. In the past two or three years it has only gotten worse! It has been so bad, that I have seriously wondered if I would have to give up rural life altogether and move to where I could just sit in a little house, in a little yard, and watch TV, and get someone else to care for the place if I couldn’t. But that does not fit in with my plans at all. After all, there is wood to be gathered, a lathe to learn to use better, chairs I want to make, and the land and animals to look after.
Five days ago, I tried glucosamine for my joints. It is me finally giving in and taking some sort of tablet. The next morning, I woke up sore. But I was not sore in my joints, or in my bones, or whatever had been hurting so severely for all those years. I woke up sore in a tired, or even exhausted sense. I was sore from all the compensating I have been doing. Muscles hurt from my awkward walk, in my legs, in my back, in my shoulders. That went on for four days. IT felt awkward more than anything. After all, I was hurting, but not at all in the way I was used to hurting. I was not hurting as much as I was used to hurting. I carried on with those days with caution, trying not to restart any of the old pains, and worried that it was all just a fluke, and that they would start up again on their own. I was also careful to take my daily dosage of my tablets.
I am still feeling quite cautious, five days in. I am worried that the pain will come back in spite of the tablets. But I am also feeling a validation of myself, because for all those years I could not understand how people could do all that they did, and for the time when I finally realized that they could not possibly be in the pain I was in, I now feel it. I feel the absence of pain. I feel the normal I always suspected they enjoyed. I am sat here now, not feeling immense pain in my hips and in my back for being sat down. I am not feeling the pain when I walk, and I think I could go at any speed my legs could take me, for a short burst, anyway. I have woke up in the morning, and not been in immense pain for just being lay there, my hips hurting, my shoulders stiff, my hands and wrists unable to move without cracking in the joints with every move. Instead, I feel what normal must feel like! I feel like getting up, doing things, and living, rather than giving up, trying to figure out the least impactful way of getting anything done, and wondering how long I can go on.
Do you know how strange this all is? Do you know what it is like to only suspect that you are basically handicapped, but unable to bring yourself to really admit it, and unable to suggest to s doctor that maybe you should be considered for a placard for the blue parking spots? I know people would look at me and see that I was walking in, and would be likely to confront me, and I have no desire to argue, because I would tend to want to go low in such a debate. I cannot see why I should have to have patience for such people, or why anyone who is handicapped should have to either. It is strange to suddenly feel what is normal, and what is able, when I only suspected I was missing it before because I have been without it for so damn long.
I take this with humility, with a sense of gratitude, and with above all, a spot in my heart for those who are disabled and cannot come to such a place as I have been fortunate enough to find. I come to this space with hope that I can make up for what has been lost and spend another fifty years being a full part of the lives of my family and friends, without holding them back, and without being unable to do what they need done from me. Christ, I have been out of the workforce since 2005 because of this!
The next step is to try this all out, and to build new habits. I am not in the habit of getting up and getting at my day. I have had to get up and rest, and let my body try to get with it in order to start my day. It is a new habit to get up and get right on with it. But these last few days I have felt better by the time I have been busy all day and gone to bed, than when I was waking up before. That sure is a pleasure!
I am amazed and completely stunned to be able to say all of this. I never thought I would find a way other than Advil, which is no way to deal with daily pain. Will it last? I can only hope. And I do hope for many years.