POP!
What the hell was that?
The older I got, the more I realized the importance of discipline. The son of lazy people, I grew up to be a lazy, undisciplined man.
Are you surprised? Yeah, me neither.
Three months before I began practicing discipline. In all areas of my life, I began rituals and practices that would help me eradicate laziness. I exercised, stretched, meditated, read, ate right, and cut down on coffee and alcohol. In the mornings, I recited affirmations in front of my mirror. In the afternoons, I visualized things I wanted to manifest in my life. Heck, I even bought crystals and sprinkled them throughout my trailer.
My favorite morning ritual was stretching. I was determined to maintain hip mobility. The research showed a strong correlation between hip mobility and life expectancy. I wasn’t setting the world on fire with my accomplishments, but that didn’t mean I was ready to cash in my chips.
The gunshot loud pop seemed to come from my left SI joint. That’s the sacroiliac junction for the learned. I’d trained for and become a massage therapist. A lifelong low-back pain sufferer, I was determined to at least fix my pain. I was convinced the SI joint was central to my pain.
The thing a lot of people don’t realize about people who suffer from chronic pain is that it is chronic. It might lessen; it might even leave you in a pain-free state for a few minutes or even hours, but it always returns. For as long as I can remember I’ve had an achy lower back. At seven years of age, I ran out in front of a car. That little stunt resulted in a broken right femur. I compensated, and my left hip was always tight.
Something had shifted in my hips.
Do I dare hope?
I dared.
I stood up from my yoga mat.
Oh yeah, something’s different.
My back felt okay.
Most people don’t get excited about things feeling just okay. But we chronic pain people will sing and dance for okay. Feeling okay was better than okay; feeling okay was fine.
I had to test my new condition. But before I did that, I made careful notes about the stretches I’d done. If my POP indicated something good, I wanted to find my way back to it, so I spent about eleven minutes writing what stretches I’d done that morning.
Time to go for a run.
Running has always been something that eludes me. I jog, but as I’ve gotten older, the pounding of my feet on any surface, even the earth, can irritate my LBP (low-back pain).
I slipped on my current favorite walking/jogging/running shoes and headed to the track down the street.
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I couldn’t stop smiling. My face lit up when I finished my first lap with a not terrific, not terrible time. My back still didn’t hurt.
Did I back up my notes?
I had. As an aspiring author, I religiously copy everything to the ubiquitous cloud. The stretches I’d done that morning were the key. For years, I expected, like most people in pain do, that there were some key exercises or stretches that I could perform and that it would change my life. Apparently, I’d found the key.
Whoa!
My mind exploded with fantasies of publishing a book detailing my set of stretches. While I didn’t think that my combination of stretches could help everyone who suffered LBP, I figured there must be some segment of folks whose pain was like mine.
I’m going to be rich!
“Good morning! You look happy today!”
Missy’s voice startled me and brought me back to the track. I’d been beaming like a fool in love.
“Good morning, Missy,” I said, turning to make my way back home. I like Missy, but I wanted to review what I’d recorded earlier. My future wealth might depend upon it.
Three weeks later
I hopped out of bed. The first few days, I was half expecting to wake up to find my pain had returned. It hadn’t. I still stretched, but I was gentle with my hips, fearing that anything strenuous might shift my joints, ligaments, tendons, and muscles back into some painful configuration.
I’m still fine; this is wild.
I had three weeks of pain-free existence. That’s not something most people can relate to.
Three weeks!
I bounced up and down on my feet a few times, then brushed my teeth.
The face in the mirror was off. Something was wrong with it.
The mirror is dirty, duh.
I’d installed discipline into my personal care routines, but none of that structure and rigor invaded my home cleaning practices, which were nonexistent. I did the bare minimum to get by.
I scrubbed the mirror with a hand towel, but it did little to improve my reflection. My color had faded a bit. I opened my medicine cabinet and dry-swallowed three echinacea tablets. If I was getting sick, I wanted to do whatever I could to minimize it.
I felt fine and managed a five-mile run.
The sun shined on the track as I stopped my GPS watch timer. When I saw my elapsed time, my jaw dropped.
Fifty minutes? Are you kidding me?
I’d averaged ten-minute miles for nearly an hour.
The next day
Wake up, stand up, stretch. I step into the shower, feeling optimistic. I began writing my self-help book for eradicating low back pain. (Or at least how I got rid of my LBP. This worked for me; maybe it might work for you!)
Stepping from my shower, I toweled off, stepped out of the fog, and stood at my vanity.
What the hell?
What I saw in the mirror made my blood turn into ice water.
My color was even worse. I looked pale.
Nope, you are mistaken, brother. Look again, please.
I leaned into the mirror, studying my reflection like I was scrutinizing a new type of spider – one that was a foot in diameter and had wings.
I began shaking. I had to grab the counter to support myself and hold myself upright.
On the wall behind me, I have a small nightlight which is plugged into an oddly high outlet.
I can see the nightlight.
The miniature salt-lamp nightlight was a gift I’d received from a coworker. It plugged into an outlet. The best thing was it changed colors; its light cycled through a dozen different colors.
I can see the nightlight.
I shouldn’t have been able to see the nightlight. It was directly behind me. The nightlight, my body, and my reflection were in a straight line; one that was perpendicular to the mirror.
How can I see the nightlight?
I wasn’t turning pale. I was turning transparent.
So much for the ridiculous amounts of money my book would pull in.
Would my book include a caveat on the back cover?
I couldn’t know that my stretches had caused this development, but the thing is, I did know precisely that.
The stretches I did twenty-two days ago are turning me invisible.
I needed a caveat on the back cover. It would read: “WARNING: Using the stretches in this book might cause you to turn transparent.”
Stories by Shawn 