I sat down on the chair, a low-slung white trim wooden Scandinavian thing that wanted my ass all the way against the backrest, which would elevate my knees and leave my feet dangling since chairs aren’t built for short people. Thinking the laws of physics didn’t apply to me, I sat on the front of the chair and felt it slowly slide out from under me.
Don’t fight it, I thought, and I let the chair pour me onto the coffeehouse floor in roughly the same position I had sat down—flat on my ass, legs straight. I could feel the expression on my face. It wasn’t fear or surprise. It was just a smirk of bewilderment as a barista and my friend rushed to me.
I was fine, and quickly stood from the floor, laughing.
I’m in Los Angeles again. What could possibly go wrong that I haven’t already experienced?
Tomorrow I’m celebrating my 51st birthday at Club Tee Gee, the bar where I cried last April/a lifetime ago. I’m not sure who that person was. She was a shadow in cold wind coming down the mountain where the flowers bloomed, sleep-deprived, in constant physical pain that often turned to emotional pain, drained and desiccated.
What can six months do? Nothing big. I sent my kid off to college, though, and that’s been a huge revelation that, despite everything I’ve told myself for 20 years, I’ve been good at this parenting business. So much better than I thought I was when I was in the thick of it for two decades.
But something else happened 20 years ago.
I had a few rounds of sciatica when I was pregnant with CJ, and I thought it ended with their birth. The knot that appeared in the muscles along my spine? Surely that was just the stress of new motherhood, all the lifting and carrying, or maybe it was what kept my head and limbs attached to my body. For 20 years I’ve carried these knotted muscles, which spread their tightness and pain along the shelf where my ass meets my back. Such is life.
Except the pain grew much worse when my knees got injured. I always forget that, the day I was told I had degenerative joint disease and I’d never feel as good as I felt on that day, that I was also told I had some nerve compression in my back.
I haven’t been fully honest during my knee surgery recovery. For many months I’ve said I’m fine when I haven’t been fine. People who are fine can stand for more than five minutes without electric shocks of pain shooting down the backs of their thighs, stocking seams burned through flesh to bone. People who are fine can walk more than a block without having to lean their asses against the curve of the streetlight posts, pressing into the generator of the pain.
Last year my orthopedist told me this was normal. Since my knees were without cartilage for so long, my femur and shin bones ground down, turning 1/2 inch of bone to dust and leaving me shorter. He replaced my missing height when he made my prosthetics. As he should. But my muscular system had gradually shifted to accommodate my shortened bones and was quickly thrown back into its old positioning, causing the compressed nerve/sciatic pain on a new, blinding level that was almost as painful as my bone-on-bone knees. It was supposed to self-correct. It didn’t.
Inside the ball-and-socket hip joint, there are two smaller joints that attach the femur to the pelvis. I learned this on my second day of physical therapy last month, after an assessment that showed my knees, legs, and hips being stronger than the average (ahem, not fat) woman my age. My flexibility is ridiculous, allowing me to contort and twist my way into almost-comfortable positions.
But these joints … My physical therapist shoved his hands under my ass as I lay on the table. Groping and digging into flesh, he assured me that the pain and awkwardness would be worth it. Two small pops on each side.
I stood. And the electricity had been disconnected. The spark of nerve pain immediately diminished, and I realized that I hadn’t just lived with that since the knee injury. It had been a part of my body for much, much longer.
When CJ was born, I was in labor for 34 hours which ended in an emergency c-section. Because I have a genetic predisposition for rejecting painkillers, the anesthesia stopped working before I was fully stitched. We had to wait for another round to work with my abdominal muscles wide open. And then came the antibiotic-resistant infection in the incision that took a month to fight.
Did you know that, when labor goes that long, and the muscles are actively engaged for so many hours, they just give up sometimes, announcing that this is where they’re going to stay until someone moves them?
Like the knot in my lower back that I noticed during a massage a few months after giving birth, when I was supposed to be “recovered” but felt the pain in every step, always dancing from one foot to the other.
The physical therapist told me we can fix this in 12 weeks. Maybe less. I’ve done five weeks of physical therapy and, while I’m still very early in the process, I can once again, for the first time since I was in my 20s, move without feeling like I’m bursting into flames.
So I’m in Los Angeles again. My energy’s returning as I’m able to exercise and move like I haven’t been able to do for decades. The first two nights I was here, I was at concerts, standing in lines, walking, moving. Not like a fully healed person, but not like I was six weeks ago. And as the pain diminishes, so does this cloud that had settled over my brain, which has been making pain management its top priority for 20 years.
Do you have any idea how much a subconscious works to cope with chronic, persistent pain? I had no idea, but now that my pain is ending—yes, there’s an end in sight—I realize how every interaction I’ve had, every choice I’ve made for all these years has had the undercurrent of this pain underneath, calling the shots. I thought that was just the case since 2017 when I busted my knees. But it’s been there for the duration of my kid’s life. CJ has never had a mom not in pain. And that’s a fucking shame. It’s part of being a woman, of being strong, of taking care of the things no one else wants to deal with. Which is absolute bullshit. This is one of those things that doesn’t get treated because women’s health issues are under-researched and dismissed.
Those joints my physical therapist popped back into place? They’d likely been out of place that entire time. Imagine walking around with your shoulders dislocated for two decades.
Tomorrow I’ll turn 51 after a year of revelations, realizations, loses, gains, and so many surprises. And for once I’m glad to welcome a new year. This day usually involves a lot of dread. Today is the 32nd anniversary of my grandmother’s death. Monday is the first anniversary of my grandfather’s death. In between those deaths is my life. A life that’s now clear and bright, with the glimmer of hope that, when I’m in New Orleans next month, I’ll be strolling through Marigny, in search of another stupid tattoo or a witch to befriend, without leaning against the streetlamps, pressing their metal into the knot, willing away a pain that lasted for so long and was so deep it was a part of the fiber of my being.
I’m celebrating with friends and drinks and burgers at Club Tee Gee tomorrow, and I will not be the girl crying in the bar again. I might have another chair reject me, and if so I’ll just go with it again. Now that every fall doesn’t potentially lead to disability and unmanageable pain, the cloud is lifting and it’s a new year.
I’m so happy for you! I’m also so angry at your doctors for missing this, all this time. I hope you have a fabulous birthday. I feel like this healing is going to free you in magical ways and I can’t wait to read about it.