Pain in the Ass (Amongst other Places)

I don't know whether to be grateful or grudging that pain returned at the onset of a much needed vacation. It's still here - though shifting (and becoming more malleable with awareness. While the time away brought some awesome moments, it culminated in yet another awful stress. My mother-in-law was in a pretty serious car accident. Miraculously, she's alright (physically, anyway). The car, not so much. It's totaled. But it means more things to worry about. My husband is most definitely having the chance to see aging in action - like, writ large - with all of the responsibility that being one's adult child entails. Really, this fucking age-and-stage shit is not our jam. (Note: Scott really is handling things admirably.)

I realize that I spend a lot of time on this blog complaining or, as I like to call it, being honest. (I like to think that I also spend a lot of time on this blog being positive or an occasional resource for others or a momentary good read.) The fact is that I can only write about where I'm at, and who I am, at any given moment.

Sometimes, I'm the crazy yarn stash-buster. Other times, such as today, I'm the lady who has - in the last 2 weeks - somehow managed to accumulate more stash than she actually busted on her recent, serious stash-busting mission (which was a success). Don't worry - I have a very exciting post about that coming up. If you like to watch rationalization in action, that is.

I'm also that half-mathy / half-half-assed intuitive sewist, who's having a super time refining the Appleton dress - and top - over these past few days. I'm going very slowly because, well, I feel like I'm a hundred and like I've been hit by a bus. Moreover, I don't know what the rush is. I have enough dresses to wear on Monday.

FYI, the osteopath, like the massage therapist, believes I have dislocated my tailbone. If this is the case, it should be a fairly easy (but unpleasant) fix. And while I'm pleased to know that the immediacy of my butt pain will likely be temporary, the metaphor is both hilarious and seemingly eternal (at least these days).

Peeps, I live in this body. I know it very well (even as it evades me with its complexity). My lower back/hip/sacral/coccyx pain may be fixable at the extreme (and thank God for that!), but this is related to my other intermittent chronic pain. I can feel it. And I've spent the last four weeks (often standing for an hour at a time) going through the highs and lows. The low: it's horrid. The high: it's fucking experiential. I feel my structural interrelatedness with increased clarity. Before the pain was a cement block, now it's a series of calibrated layers. My awareness increases with every phase. I'm getting better at this, even if the pain isn't falling away. To feel one's body is a great privilege, even if the sensation is the product of a faulty feedback loop. This sensation is a gift, even as it's a curse. It shows me, viscerally, how everything is just the product of perception.

Here's the thing, I don't know if I'm going to have this issue (on and off as it is) for another year or another 5 years or for the rest of my freakin' life. (Note: I truly do not believe it will last for the rest of my life because I believe I can resolve it with awareness and change. My money's on me. For whatever reason, I really do believe in myself. Moreover, hormones will change.) Alas, I don't appear to be the fastest learner.

I have come up with an interesting practice - approximately 20 minutes of work with the MELT roller (I do my own "poses" which target the trigger points), followed by another 25-30 minutes of gravity-based yoga. What is this? Well, I don't know if it exists, as such, or if it's a technique I've devised from my experience of other schools of yoga. I do a series of poses. They can change but include those wherein I can use a either part of my body or a prop (sometimes elaborate, self-devised) to stabilize and ground another part of my body. I hold these poses for 10-15 minutes, increasing the intensity, very slowly, through various isometric micro-actions. These actions are not taken to extremes - the goal is to activate the pain source SO gently that it tricks the source, which then yields and the pain response diminishes. It's bizarrely subtle work. One mobilizes this action with slow, even breathing and conscious muscular breath control (pranayama).  It think it would be very hard to teach this.

Scott is increasingly of the opinion that I should do some weight-lifting (something that fills me with dread at the best of times and seems insane right now). He feels the issue might be exacerbated by muscle atrophy and that, at very least, the endorphins produced might reroute my pain response. I'm not on this page but, hey, desperate times. And he's lived through the entirety of my experience, if one step removed. We both spend a lot of time hatching plans that might improve crazy Kristin-pain.

Of course, life doesn't go into stasis just because one feels like shit. It's an interesting time in my career right now and I'd be unwise not to leverage it. So I'm using all of my tenacity - which is formidible, thankfully - to plow on.

At any rate, just wanted to check in on this topic. I sincerely hope that, if there are other readers out there who manage pain, that my updates may serve as community newsletter of sorts. We are not alone and we are capable of affecting change. We're also the poster children for goddamn fortitude. Here's to self-awareness. (Def toast with a good wine.)