I’m still fretting over my sore and tingly back and my numb and now sometimes painful hands. I’m told that overly tight muscles can pinch a nerve and cause the sort of trouble I’m having.
I feel very middle-aged.
Oddly, I’m sleeping pretty well, I just wake up feeling weird and numb.
Last night I tried to sleep without a pillow. I’m one of those people who builds a mountain of pillows and squooshes them around until the right set of qualities has been achieved: height, softness, receptivity, firmness, yes, I realize some of those are in conflict with others.
Pure Luck finds my affinity for multiple pillows rather hilarious.
But remember when babies were allowed to have pillows and sleep on their tummies? I must have been one of those babies. My children seem to sleep flat on their backs, because, guess what? I put them down on their backs. (That whole "Back to Sleep" thing came in when #1 Son was a baby. I remember re-training myself, since my impulse was to put him on his tummy. Probably what my mother told me to do. Probably what she did with me.)
I discovered that I feel like I can’t breathe when I’m flat on my back. I also think you have to relax completely to sleep in such an open and vulnerable position. Even so, I’ll be trying again tonight, to see if that might help.
Meanwhile, numb and painful hands are not lifting weights. This past week has been a disaster where physical activity is concerned, between the attempts to walk on icy surfaces and the eschewing of the gym. I am trying to remind myself that spring will come, and I will walk outdoors in temperatures that don’t hurt my bad ear, and that no person can do everything, every day.
Right?
Here’s a little Rumi for what ails me:
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
I really don’t want to go back to sleep, to slip into a lethargic food-induced coma. I want to be awake. But apparently that conscious wakefulness involves dealing with the disappointment that comes with a middle-aged body or a temporary (hopefully) strain or injury, finding a way to walk through it even when you can’t walk out of it or walk it out.
I hope walking through it can still contain a little whining.
Once again your Queen for A Day,
Songbird