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.
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