A Moment of Ease

[This one felt more like what I used to write like, maybe because my mood has picked up because of what I have described.  Though, upon a proof read, it was not one of my better bits of prose.]

It has been a long time coming, . . . , this moment.

First, I realized a new way to explain chronic pain that I must express.  So similar to what I have written and told people and doctors before, it is not until a change that things can really be understood, even noticed.

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Take your mind back to the last time you were injured, a tweaked knee or twisted ankle may be easiest, but a burn or other injury to a part of your body you use often for daily living can be a substitute.  I'll use the twisted ankle as an example, one where you are supposed to remain off of it for as much as possible.  It's swollen such that just moving the leg in the air actually causes discomfort and pain.  Can you remember?  Empathize?

With this hurt ankle, let's say you find yourself alone, even if for just a short time.  Let's say you were hungry and hobbled through the pain to the kitchen, made something to eat, poured a drink, and gimped you way back to the couch, carefully balancing your provisions while using furniture and walls for support on the journey.  Make no mistake, even just 25 feet from kitchen to couch is a journey.  You set down the food on the end table, twist and fall in a pseudo-jump onto the couch so your leg can land raised on the pile of pillows it was supposed to remain elevated upon, and you exhale, somewhat triumphantly, in appreciation of finishing the deed, persevering through the pain, now able to "stay off" the leg as you know you are supposed to.

Then you see the remote control is a good 4 feet out of reach and you will have to get up again.

That is the moment I am talking about.  It's the "Oh fuck, I have to go through that again" feeling.  You know how much it is going to hurt.  You had hoped you were done hurting for at least a little while, only to discovered yourself wrong so soon after thinking you would get a break.  You have to struggle through pain, again, and even if it is just for a small task, you want nothing to to with it, but know it is unavoidable.  There will be no break.  Not yet, anyways.

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Living with chronic pain is knowing that feeling ALL THE TIME.  There is never a break.  You forget breaks from pain even exist.  Every involuntary movement brings discomfort, sometimes even severe pain, and often the inability to relax at all is oppressive when you are perfectly still, only breathing.  Just being,  just the force of gravity upon limbs and the pressure of their weight against the bed is torture enough.  Yet, every action you have to take has that same bit of despair, that moment of "not again," constantly as a burden.  It is relentless, how it troubles your mind. 

This is why you don't want to do anything, go anywhere, even just get out of bed or off the couch, ever.

For me, this has been the last 6 years or so.

Worth noting, I often do appreciate that things are not worse, because I have tasted it, when sick or injured on top of my constant issues.  I know there are people living with worse pain, and for a much longer time, than what I suffer, yet I do try to convince myself that I endure through more then many would (suicide being a topic of reoccurring consideration).

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Why was I suddenly able to realize this description?  I was visited, check that, I am still being visited by an old friend, the ear infection, and another has just managed to start in the other ear as well.

I had not been using any strong pain medication for a few weeks now.  Things had been progressing well.  I really feel movement getting towards the highest part of my back to the bottom of my neck, and in my shoulders such that I literally feel movement wrap around my arms as it travels down the muscles.  Anyways, with such "productivity," I took the progress with the pain.

Then, the ear infection hit day two.  I still have ear drops from my last one.  Though it has been a while (year or more), I have probably averaged 1-3 a year, sometimes really bad ones.  They do, however, trump the chronic pain, making the other parts of my body feel better, relatively speaking.  After all, the easiest way to stop feeling the pain in one body part is to hurt another part worse.

But day 2 of the ear infection brought stronger pain, an area of about 3 to 4 inches circling the ear becoming quite sensitive such that even slight jaw movement brought ear pain.  So I cracked open the Narco.  Without getting into it deeply, I'll admit I had also been avoiding the better pain killers because of constipation issues, having had some bleeding and hemmoroid pain the previous month.  So, I also doubled the Miralax dose for my coffee.

About an hour after taking the pill, I could honestly say that I almost felt good.  I could have done something.  I even wanted to do something.  I wanted to go do yard work or wash my car.  I didn't, thank God, knowing that the pain meds would wear off soon enough and any increased swelling around my ear would necesitate a higher dose of pain killer just to stop me from screaming, but I actually WANTED to get off the couch and do something.  I wasn't burdened.  The idea of just standing up no longer seemed an pain filled endeavor.

Sure, the moment did not last.  And yes, it was also spoiled by my overactive mind, which approached a mental breakdown over the realization that I had not felt anywhere near decent in 6 or more years (I used to be a "morning person" that would jump out of bed and attack the day's chores).  Yet, I finally had a moment, a moment of ease.  It has been so long.

What I Know - The First Entry

[The following is the latest of several dozen, at the time, legitimate efforts to begin writing that which I am compelled to write.  The desire to put the concepts to prose, and my story, kept me from following thoughts of suicide back when things were, . . . , difficult.  Out of anger, out of compassion, out of hubris, I imagine all had a significant roll in this compulsion, anger at the doctors that ignored my pleas, compassion in wanting others to stop suffering in ignorance, and hubris, because I cannot deny how heartbroken I would be to learn I am totally wrong, so I must have pride and longing to be right.

It is my goal to produce a book, eventually.  This forum shall be where, when able, I shall attempt to outline portions and/or craft rough drafts.  That said, questions and/or corrections, no matter how small or large, will be appreciated in the comment section.  While I have not figured out how I shall, with precision, identify that which is fact (like my getting taller or "structural" changes to my person) from perception (the subjective feelings of certain experiences) from theories, I hope that in these entries they will be facially obvious.

It may be useful to take a listen to The Beatles' While My Guitar Gently Weeps if the lyrics do not come fresh to mind.  This entry is clearly rooted in some of the language expressed therein.  Not crucial, but again, it does note I am not trying to say anything new.  So many have tried to express it before in so many ways, only to be misinterpreted or not fully realized.  Or maybe I am so off of field I don't recognize that most do know?  Sigh.

Already exhausted (several hours on this page), my mind is shot.  It takes far too much effort to reorganize my attempted writings, so this is it, for this attempt, anyways.  Last, subsequent to this post, I shall paste a pair of my previous public attempts to write about my story, both coming during times of desperation, when I was searching for help via a message in a bottle, but both containing portions which may add context to this entry which otherwise may be difficult to take seriously.]

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I have no idea when I shall sit and attempt to continue this endeavor.  Yet, here is the preface, or rather, my proclamation. 

I know something important.  I am certain of it.  Hopefully, after I am capable of getting it all down in prose, so it can be experienced by others.

In general terms, in Eastern terms, I found my balance, my center, my Chi.  For clarification's sake, I have not reached that balanced point yet.  I have not experienced physical enlightenment.  I have not known my Chi.  It would be more accurate to say I discovered it's existence, I can see it, and I am on my way toward experiencing it, and with it, a moment of piece. 

Believe me, I have not had a moment of piece, possibly ever.  Yet now, I know , I am on a path to The Path. 

Of The Path, I, too, have realized that one cannot travel upon It, but merely cross It with each step.  And I cannot wait to cross It.

My ultimate goal (aside from crossing The Path myself and experiencing even just a moment of piece) is to articulate a manner in which individuals more intelligent than myself, more knowledged in a wide variety of fields including mathematics and physical dynamics, can take what I am trying to explain and quantify one's center, one's Chi, and thereby be able to physically map the manner every individual is supposed to exist, posturally, to help everyone find their balance.  Every person's will be different, unique for themselves, yet identifiable.

At it's most simplistic, it would be the absolute posture one's body is supposed to maintain as determined by genetics.  I believe it can be mapped.  I believe it is not only possible, but a certainty to happen eventually, one that reoccurs over time, just in differing means of expression.  Let me explain.

To be balanced is to be upon The Path.  No one can remain there, at least not for long.  The enlightened spend their time straddling it.  Most people, well, lets go with most Americans, have no idea even of it's existence.  We (yes, American am I) live off The Path.  Some walk parallel to it, while most walk further and further from it with every step.  This group makes up your standard Bell curve, most, some 95%, are a reasonable (relatively speaking) distance from The Path, a few are astoundingly far from it.

I was astoundingly far from it.

Worse, I was of such an unlikely sort as to have no idea I was so far from it.  I was a perversion, only one which, by chance (?), was "normal" enough to believe he was normal.

Make no mistake.  I was an oddity as a youth and teen.  My best friend Labelled me "disturbed," and she was quite right.  Only, I did not know it.  I knew I was different, but not that I was wrong.  The odd things about me, I chalked up to being a teen.  "Everyone thinks they are different and have unique problems," a guidance counselor would say to the entire school.  I figured my uniqueness was merely subjective.  How easily the brain will opt to believe it fits in.  I ignored the physical feats I could perform and my unusual abdomen, considering my self special instead of wrong.

Those stories, descriptions, and facts are for other portions of my tale, however.  Here, it is enough to know that I was so unlike others.  So, . . . perverted, that my physical form caused mental anguish greater than I could stand.  My nervous system was out of sync.  A crash was inevitable.  I, as I believe many have before me, crashed from existing too far from The Path, and I took refuge through Psychiatry.

I found some help there, but the complications of the perversion I had become could not be stilled.  I could find no peace from any drugs, prescription or otherwise.  I gave up, and in giving up, the seed of change was planted.  I had somehow been so far from The Path, so perverted, that in a moment of heightened exhaustion, I was able to see I was not physically right.

That was when I applied myself.  A simple task at first, altering how I walked, but it had significant ramifications.  In time, I gained over an inch and a half in height, untying knots in my body, using muscles left in atrophy for decades.  Several of my bones changed the way they had positioned themselves for as long as I could remember.  That was when I realized that which I believe so many others have known before me, what Buddha discovered under a tree, what John discovered through baptism.  To use Beatles lyrics, It was not that I had learned how to unfold my love (that I had yet, and have yet, to master or accomplish fully), but I had realized that I was folded, quite literally.

So, what does this matter?  Well, that 95% of individuals in the center of the Bell curve.  They, likely you, are not far enough from The Path so see it, to feel it, to discover it.  But perhaps, if I can articulate myself well enough to bring you through what I have been and still am going through, you will, and much more likely than not, without the pain.  The slightest deviation from The Path causes suffering, physical suffering that over time, goes unnoticed because of it's constant presence, yet physiologically has a dramatic effect on the nervous system (I theorize), and thereby one's mental faculties.

I believe it is a commonality historically that people like myself come along, so perverted that they invariably find enlightenment, or, I suppose, die insane and in excruciating pain.  It is cyclical.  I have reason to believe many a prophet was simply articulating their conception of The Path in the words of their time, in the terms of their own experience.  Do not overreact to this statement, please.  My meaning will be plain soon enough. 

As a simple example, I suggest it is not coincidental that Muslim prayer and yoga's Child's Pose are so similar in both physical postural nature and it's mental and physiological consequences.  They are two truisms to aid the body remain close to The Path.  Both are correct in their own terms.  One may more correct than others, just as I am certain this attempt will be no where near as accurate as that which has been or will be expressed in better terms.  Yet, I do believe, sincerely, that The Path can be expressed scientifically, quantified in some numerical fashion.  Some will be able to do so in the future.  I mean to help nudge the endeavor in this new direction.

I mean to help start a new age of understanding The Path that incorporates scientific quantification of the human condition.

Now, that shouldn't be so hard, right?