I Did Everything Right
And my back did exactly what it wanted anyway.
I tried to get up, and something in my lower back answered with a pain sharp enough to stop me mid-motion.
I could move. Technically. But every attempt, arms, legs, even just shifting my weight, brought the same sharp pain, until I stopped trying.
I can’t move. What will I do?
I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t lie back down either, not without the same sharp pain meeting me halfway. I was stuck between two positions, neither one possible, both of them hurting.
Toby didn’t come to lie next to me. Instead, he stayed near, close enough that I could feel he hadn’t left, like he understood that lying next to me wasn’t what I needed right then. Just presence. Just proof I wasn’t entirely alone in the room, even if I was alone in the fear.
I lay there and prayed for the pain to ease enough to let me choose a position and stay in it. That was the whole ask. Not fixed. Just still.
A few days later, once I could stand without gripping something first, my mother watched me cross the room and said what had clearly been sitting in her for a while.
You do everything right. The exercises, the walks, the stretches for your back specifically. And it still happened anyway.
She wasn’t lecturing me. She was still a little scared herself, I could hear it, and she was just thinking out loud, the way you do when something doesn’t add up and you are trying to make it make sense anyway.
It didn’t make sense. That was the part neither of us said.
But there was something I didn’t expect to feel proud of, mid-crisis: my work didn’t need me.
Not because I don’t have work. I had two projects running that week. But I’d built in buffer time on both deadlines, enough room that a bad week wouldn’t turn into a missed one. And the content that was supposed to publish while I was out already had, scheduled days in advance, going live without me having to lift a finger, let alone get out of bed.
I didn’t plan for a back injury specifically. I planned for the fact that my body doesn’t always ask permission before it does something inconvenient. Lupus taught me that lesson years ago. This week, a different part of my body just reminded me it applies everywhere, not just where I expected it to.
The systems weren’t built for these exact days. They were built for days like this. Turns out that’s the same thing.
I’m still not all the way back. I get up on my own now, no walls, no gripping furniture, but I move carefully, like I’m borrowing someone else’s joints. Some mornings I still catch myself moving like an old woman and almost laugh at it. Almost.
I’m still a little emotional about that day. About being alone in it, about not knowing, for a few hours, whether I’d be able to walk normally again. That fear doesn’t fully leave just because the pain did.
But I’m grateful too, for Toby staying close instead of far, for buffer time I built months before I needed it, for a body that scared me and then, mostly, came back.
And I’m grateful for this, too.
I’m writing this from bed, voice to text, because sitting at a keyboard still isn’t something my back wants to do. A year ago I might not have had a way to get these words down except by waiting. Today I just talked, and it typed.
Turns out the systems weren’t only for the deadlines. They were for this. For getting the words out even when the body that holds them isn’t cooperating.
Between the Lines
Page Turner: I’m partway through The Concise Guide to Minimalism and The Power of Hygge in Everyday Life, a two-in-one by Dan Harris, Johan Frandsen, and Emily Blake. Just finished the minimalism half, and it was the kind of read that’s both insightful and quietly motivating, the kind that makes you want to go clear a drawer immediately. On to the hygge half next. It promises gems, and I believe it.
Mind Soundtrack: “Who Is It” by Michael Jackson.
This one’s pure childhood. I remember visiting cousins much older than me and discovering their music system, record player, cassette player, and radio, all in one, an actual marvel to small me. This MJ vinyl was one of theirs, and I’d sit there listening, trying to read the lyrics off the record cover while I was still learning my letters. Mind blown, several times over.
Food for Thought: This week reminded me that rest is productive, too. I forget that sometimes, even feeling okay, even knowing better, I’ll still try to squeeze in as much as possible and shrink my scheduled breaks instead of taking them. Ironic, considering how often I talk about rest in this very newsletter. Lupus brain, probably. Or just me, being me. ☺️💜
Do you forget your own limits too, even when you know better?