Courtesy of the blog of Colene, I read this today and it struck me as particularly precise, resonant and penetrating:
“The longer and deeper pain flows, the more it lays down a sensitized trail for future pain. And this can become the conduit for other kinds of pain—divorce angst will head straight for that channel, until body pain and life pain become indistinguishable.This is why some people get a toothache when a friend dies, or other succumb to back episodes when stress hits. We all develop our own pain pathways. Lumbago, sciatica, headache, a touchy, tender knee—take your choice. Pain provides a language for wordless events like loss. Sometimes I think that pain is just the body thinking out loud.”
The quote is from Marni Jackson's book Pain: the fifth vital sign.
I've been struggling with quite a goodly amount of pain lately. Physical pain in my cursed left hip. With mixed emotions (regret -- who wants to take / rely on drugs -- and relief -- they simply work) I recruited prescription anti-inflammatories to the cause this week. Now I can walk and stand again. I just returned from getting the hip X-rayed. Soon I'll be able to run well again, but the injury remains.
The thing I always find with pain is that it perpetuates itself. Something hurts so we avoid doing it. Avoiding the pain means your body adapts. The thing that causes the pain is avoided but it becomes a weakness. It never disappears, it just waits for its moment. What will be the trigger next time: stress, fatigue, diet, loss?
Each of us treat our pain in our own way. Just as each of us experience our pain alone. We seek out relief. A way of dealing with the pain, a way of avoiding its return. Maybe a way to address the underlying condition causing the pain.
But it's a lonely journey, filled with contradictions.
Exercise brings relief, renewal and new strength. Yet exercise wears down the very muscles, bones and connective tissues that it builds. We push hard to build capacity, while at the same time risking injury. The mind can trick us. We remember being able to swim so far, run so fast, skate so hard. We want to do that again. We want to do it all.
And yet, things are different. We are different. The body fails. Or, more accurately, the body delivers a million thankless successes and a few merciless failures.
I don't think anyone could make this up.
The setup: (Rebecca) Eckler says film Knocked Up too close to home.
The transition: "Both my book and the movie feature one night of passion and the nine months that follow. Fine. Whatever," she wrote."
The punch line: "But what got me was the fact that 'Alison' was an up-and-coming television reporter; in my book, I was an up-and-coming newspaper reporter."
Well, thank goodness that 'up-and-coming' business has passed.