I had forgotten the toll that pain takes on life. For quite a while after I found myself under the wheel of my car (resulting in super cool tread mark scars on my legs, torso, and right shoulder) I seemed oblivious to it. I didn’t want to let a little thing like getting run over get in the way of life. It wasn’t until I dropped a bookshelf on my other foot and broke it that I gave up and gave in to the pain.

These events started a year and a half cycle of me barely functioning. I remember conversations with my roommate that went something like this:

Roommate: “So, what’d you do today.”

Me: “Well, I got out of bed.”

Roommate: “And…”

Me: “What, isn’t that enough!?!?”

After it became clear that I could no longer stay at school, I moved back to Seattle and had conversations with my mother that went like this.

Madre: “So, what’d you do today?”

Me: “I read a book.”

Madre: “In or out of bed?”

Me: “In”

Madre: “Well, there’s always tomorrow.”

Throughout the next six months I made good progress and our conversations looked a little more like this.

Me: “I’m coming over to your house tomorrow.”

Madre: “Do you want to come tonight, I’m making <insert delectable food here>?”

Me: “No, I went to the grocery store yesterday, I need to rest today.”

Oh. My. Goodness. One of the wonders of blogging is that it brings back things that you wouldn’t otherwise remember. Despite the fact that I just wrote that without thinking too much about it, I had completely forgotten about my months of reemerging from my apartment and how painful and completely exhausting it was. It took several months solid for me to go somewhere everyday and even then I was downing Aleve like no other.

Anyway, the point of this entry…

Last night the pain resumed. I hadn’t hurt like that for months. It was like my body had forgotten that it had been more than two years since the accident and that most of my wounds were fully healed and no longer painful. I had a really terrible night trying to sleep. This morning when I awoke I felt the worst pain between my shoulder blades toward the right one.

I lugged myself out of bed and into a HOT shower. By the time I got out it was feeling better. Then I went out into the morning chill. Within minutes it was aching again and I couldn’t turn my head without a sharp pain. When I got to class there were parking issues and I was going to be a few minutes late. “Eff it,” I thought, “I’m going home and back to sleep.”

It’s been so long since I’ve done that sort of thing; it was almost alarming. I had a good long think about the whole thing and decided that, no, I was not turning back into the hobbling, crotchety, hermit I had been for so long. I just hurt today and reacted how it came naturally the last time I had hurt like that.

Time to go to bed and start anew.