Take The Time To Read This Today

It’s hard to write about life experiences without sounding like a martyr?

Welcome to a new week Word Nerds!

This week is exploring fragments of a post I dropped haphazardly on @catchingbreaths… but doing so in full. No limitations, no short changes, no shortcuts.

I hope that it’s worth it, even if imperfect and windy … but I tried to still pull my weight in some regards by posting four days this week [incoming'] to give you as much bang for your buck as possible.

I just started a new job on the heels of my currently freelance choreographer job, which means I’ve worked for two weeks and weekends straight- no breaks, ack!

This wouldn't be that big of a deal if my neck wasn’t entirely out in a very real and serous way.

It’s been going on six weeks of (no drama, pure sincerity) = genuine suffering now…

But spine medicine moves at a snail’s pace. (That’s actually partially insulting to the snail, in fact)

I’ll update soon and keep my chin up as much as I can manage- which is not a lot when it hurts to even lay my head on a pillow, ouch… and especially to look up- but am always and forever grateful for you, your time, your support, and your eyeballs.

Here is the usual schpeal I say at the beginning of each week:

[But fret not. Skip ahead to the new words down below (beneath the line), if you’ve read this Monday Hello before]

“My Substack is where I am able to express myself creatively, share on all sorts of topics (not exclusively sickness) and it helps me to archive this “ongoing legacy” that I HOPE is the continual memoir project I’ve started.

I’m now trying to find balance in this ongoing archive while continuing to pour worthwhile work in.

And therefor aim to find a mix of posting brand new, only-on-Stack full length pieces + as well as un-chopped pieces = to make it still feel like a full space here, and not like anyone is being shortchanged.

Here are a few pennies, short of a dollar?”

Thank you for a beautiful incoming week together!

Yours,

B

If you believe that sending your empathy into the world purely by mentally placing yourself in someone else’s shoes …

Even if you can’t do anything to change it.

You can’t do anything except read and imagine. You can’t do anything except expel some sort of silent, secret wavelength of compassion into a world that has too few…

Then take the time to read this today.

It’s hard to write about life experiences without sounding like a martyr (and I’m very good at that, don’t get me wrong). Or like I’m just b*tching. Or even like I don’t realize how privileged I am compared to so so so many.

Even so, using pure fact at 12:08 AM as I’m trying to fall asleep at night, here is how time looked for me today, compared to my family members.

I woke up this morning using my coffee addiction as the primary motivator (as always), but before I could get started on work: I had to take a strong pain medication and a nerve medication, because my cervical spine pain and my bad hip have been making sleep harder and harder.

I have problems with the bones in my left hip and knee (where I’ve had surgeries and fractures before), my left shoulder and the left parts of certain vertebrae. I was always destined to lean left.

I don’t think about skeletons in the morning… but in the last year, my medications have doubled and the immediate need to slather myself in muscle creams and menthol, and grit my teeth first thing is my new normal.

I genuinely, in no uncertain terms, open my eyes: and feel immediate floods of pain.

(If I woke myself in the night and took meds so I could “stay ahead of it”, this might be less of an issue, but I want to reserve that for operations only. So pain and the smell of coffee are all I know of mornings, no matter how much I ice, heat or prop things the night before.)

Dammit. I didn’t even make it past coffee to show you what time is actually like in one body versus the next.

Don’t worry. It’s not for sympathy or to make you feel weird and sad (don’t. That’s a direct order). It’s genuinely because the best ways we learn are through art and imagination, so in this case: I want you to imagine tomorrow with me… tomorrow.

And today? Today just think of all the souls in the world who experience mornings just like this (and of course far worse) and still have to keep pushing to the next.

Think of them…

And eventually, empathy makes them an us.

PART ONE.

More in the next piece!

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