cleansing.

I wish I was a bath person. Right now, when I have had a bizarrely painful day, and I am sitting on my couch all alone, a bath is seemingly just what I need. But I am more of a shower person.

I woke this morning, in the eeeeeeaaaaaarly hours, with a foreign feeling in my body: back pain. Ew.

I went back to sleep, thinking I could sleep it off.

I woke again, this time in the early hours, and the pain was still there.

Back pain has always been an old wives tale to me. I remember when I was little and people would complain of head aches or heart burn, and I was left utterly confused and equally skeptical. This is how I have continued to be with this thing - this incredible pain - all these adults around me complain about. I thought maybe a good portion of the paid resided in their minds, until this morning.

I attempted to work, to no avail, and ended up, at around eight-thirty this morning, lying on the part of my body that was producing the pain. I was there for nearly eight hours, and during that time, replaced all of my skepticism with sympathy.

While on the couch - surrounded by the dark of the day and staring at the ceiling - I thought a lot about what I wrote about in the last post - this ambitious life I sometimes think I want to lead. Then I thought about pain, took it further to chronic pain, and got stuck on the part that we have no control over. I didn't intentionally do something to my body to keep it from working. But it wasn't working. And when our bodies fail us, it becomes even more difficult to keep up with even basic things, like doing dishes or tying our shoe laces.

This makes the issue of taking care of myself about more than just myself.

Off to shower.