my body just laughs because it knows who started this war
That ability can be temporary is something you understand deep in the body if you have lived with chronic pain, or just chronic physical dysfunction.
Doing a totally mundane task today - laundry and folding said - and something in my lower back went into spasm, signaled by a sudden, searing, breathtaking, loss of ability.
Several rounds of stretching exercises, multiple ice and heat packs and painkillers and shrieks of pain later and I am managing, just about, to move. But the thoughtless, pain-free mobility of just hours ago is perhaps a couple of days away, at best.
You get to a threshold, with certain conditions, after which the amount of time you have spent “powering through” pain is greater than the amount of time you have spent pain-free.
I am fortunate - I can still power through. I can remember what it is like to be fully mobile, and I know that (this time at least) I am on my way back there.
I have not yet reached that other threshold, the switch from temporary ability - however precarious - to permanent disability. A switch that will come for many of us, eventually.
Attribution:
I am always begging my body not to be so broken
but my body just laughs because it knows who started
this war. on days like this, I am ashamed to look in the mirror so I lie in bed and pretend to be someone else.the pretending is another thing to be ashamed of but that is a story for later. everything I’ve ever wanted is miles away from my outstretched hands.— from chronic illness by Fortesa Latifi