My back hurts. Literally right now it is screaming in pain at me, like a bratty child whose mother won’t let it have two cookies for dessert. My back just won’t shut up.
In my youth, many people told me many important and serious truths about growing up that I would later find indispensable. Truths such as rotating your tires every 3,000 to 5,000 miles saves money in the long term. Your first crush probably won’t be your last. Stealing napkins at Burger King isn’t even technically a real crime. But no one ever, ever in my life prepared me for what would happen to my back as I got older.
I recently pulled a muscle in my back, which kept me mostly bedridden except for short bursts of being helped to the bathroom (or long bursts of trying to get to the bathroom myself accompanied by angry cursing that no one was there to help me). I spent days writhing in agony, and I honestly don’t feel like I deserve it.
Back pain is a hellacious mystery. I don’t feel like I was adequately prepared for how much this one part of my body would turn against me, like a jilted lover in a Shakespearean play, plotting and scheming with my enemies to destroy me. I’m not sure what I ever did to my back to make it this mad at me, but I must have eaten the last Ding Dong in the box for it to be this thoroughly angry.
I mean seriously, what exactly in the hell did I ever do to piss my back off so much in the first place? It’s not like I’m a football player taking huge hits multiple times a week and my back finally gave out. I’m not a piano mover carrying Steinways up five flights of stairs on a daily basis. I didn’t even do anything physical to actually hurt the stupid thing.
What did I do?
I sat down.
Yes, that’s right. I literally hurt my back so severely I was physically incapacitated for days because I tried to sit down in a chair. My middle-aged body is so pathetic and helpless it can’t even handle trying to sit down. This is beyond depressing, naturally.
When I told my mother, the first thing she did was call my fiance to offer him her sincerest apologies.
“I’m so sorry, you poor thing,” she said. “I can’t imagine what you’re about to go through.”
He was confused at first, but after three days of listening to me scream–which means scream, yell, whine, holler, and whine for three days–he understood. After the fourth day, he was ready to enlist in the Space Force and be sent to a remote moon of Pluto, just to get a few moments of peace and quiet.
It was only after about six days that I was able to comfortably walk again on my own, and I’m still in a lot of pain and discomfort. So I would like to use this column to sincerely apologize to my back for whatever awful thing I did to make it want to hurt me so much.
I am very sorry. Clearly I’ve spent too many years paying attention to my front, sides, top, and bottom and have neglected to show you the love and care you seem to so desperately need. From now on, I will be sure to regard you kindly every day. And apparently never try to sit down ever again.
Rebecca Rose is in pain and wants drugs. Contact her at rrose@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 4-11, 2018.