Wishful Dancing

I am sure that my legs have it in for me.

Yesterday, on the buss, I completely lost my balance. One moment I was standing, and then, when the driver turned, my legs gave out. I fell into the lap of a lady and was deeply apologetic. She smiled and said it was no problem. “I fell a few days ago and put my hands out to stop myself from falling. I ended up feeling some woman’s breast.”

At least she had a sense of humour.

Today, I was walking to work and took a step, only to find myself falling. My left leg had completely given out and I ended up falling hard onto my back. I should have known that something like this was going to happen.

Today, I’ve tripped over my feet six times already and each time I have to catch myself, put my hands out to catch something, to grab something, so that I do not fall. There is no warning for this, no remedy I can think of.

I wish I could walk properly, that my legs would cooperate with me, that they would take me where I need to go without trying to do me in at the same time. It doesn’t seem like a fair trade, pain for walking.

But nothing in life is easy.

For the past couple of weeks, a new pain has started to form in my legs. Instead of my regular spasms, I’ve had what can only be described as tremors. Usually they’ll be on the sides of my thighs or the backs of my legs.

They start with a light tickling, as if my leg has gone to sleep. But then they progress to a hot, brief spasm. I can feel the muscles moving, more so than usual. It’s like their dancing underneath my skin. Even now, sitting here typing this, I can feel one beginning in my right thigh.

It’s as if my muscles are dancing to their own beat, to their own music. I wish I could hear the music so that I could dance with them, to their tribal beat.

After the music, after the spasms, my legs are incredibly sore and walking is painful. It hurts to put pressure on my feet, to support my body weight. I wonder, briefly, what this means and then put it out of my head.

I don’t want to think about that now.

Instead, I continue to count through the pain, count through the spasms.

One two three four, one two three four, one two three four, one two three four.

I pretend that I am dancing, that I am moving to a rhythm, moving to a beat. Maybe, if I pretend that I’m dancing long enough, the pain will go away.

Thankful for Pain

Last week, another package came for me.

I knew that I would have to pick it up at the post office. I am ashamed to admit that I was afraid to go.

I was afraid to go to the Post Office because of what happened last time; I was afraid to go because I thought it might happen again.

It is very hard for me to admit that I am afraid of anything as I usually confront that kind of thing head on. I usually ignore the pain in my legs, my feet, tell myself not to be a baby and trudge on forward.

That’s what I did the last time I went to the Post Office; and look what happened then.

I woke up last Saturday and knew that I would have to take the buss to the post office. I knew that I would not be able to walk, that my legs felt the same way they did when I ended up shuffling along, barely able to walk.

It mollified me to admit I had to take a buss. I was embarrassed by this and somewhat humiliated. But after the last time, that last walk with Elephant Legs, it took a week for them to be alright again. It took a week for the pain to go away.

But it never completely goes away anymore.

The entire time I was getting ready, I kept telling myself that it was alright to take the buss, that it didn’t mean I was weak. I kept telling myself that I shouldn’t be ashamed, that I should be proud of myself for acknowledging my limits, for sticking within them.

But even now, a week later, it still stifles me; it still rankles. And it pisses me the hell off. Normally when I get pissed off, I do something about it, but this week has been difficult.

I have been in pain almost every day. At work, I concentrate so as not to show the pain in my face when my back spasms. I remember to tell myself not to make any noises or let sound escape from me when pain rips across my legs or shoulders.

I am ashamed to admit that perhaps there is nothing I can do, that my body will eventually win the war I have been fighting for almost thirty years.

But there is some compensation to take from all this. I was supposed to have died, to have passed away after a few breaths. I was not supposed to have lived. Thankfully I have proved that doctors can  in fact be wrong.

I will be thirty in August of this year. I have had thirty wonderful years and hope to live for sixty wonderful more. Though I am filled with pain I am also filled with hope. I wonder if one is not a product of the other.

For even though the pain humiliates me, shames me, limits me.

It lets me know I am alive and I am thankful.