Nothing / in the world / is usual today.
Chronic pain is boring. It is waking up fine on a Saturday and by Sunday afternoon not being entirely able to sit, stand, or walk. In between it is ok, I suppose. Liminal.
It is familiar, too - this particular variant having been a fact of life since I was an undergraduate, at the very least.
Or perhaps you could say it is predictable, with a tendency to strike when least convenient. Though pain is never convenient.
And it is always a reminder - of frailty, of fragility, of the ephemerality of ability. That “well” is inevitably temporary.
Appreciating its absence does not necessarily make its presence easier to bear, but its presence does make its absence fonder.
Attribution
Nothing
in the world
is usual today.
This is
the first morning.
Come quickly—as soon as
these blossoms open,
they fall.
This world exists
as a sheen of dew on flowers.
— by Izumi Shikibu included in The Ink Dark Moon translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani