Day 22, Catch Up 1 – The Chiropractor

I left the laptop in Suffolk on Wednesday night as I knew DN2 needed to use it, and I was about to go on my travels.  So here I am catching up with things that made me content.  I’m pleased to say quite a lot has made me happy in the last few days.  I have worried of the value of writing so often, about the narcissism of writing about myself, but it’s also been necessary.  I am managing the pain of loss but as the next piece shows, the pain of loss has a way of being there whether you like it or not.

Day 22 was one of those ‘achieving days’.  At work I managed to get my head around quite a lot, but it could have been because I ‘achieved’ one of those challenges I set myself and frequently fail.  I cycled to the gym before work, did my work out, showered and changed, and went to work where I ate a fashionably healthy breakfast (ginger porridge if you’d like to know, and lovely it was too). A good deal thinking and planning was accomplished during the day. This was useful because the next few days were to be busy, both professionally and personally.  It was helpful to have time to breathe and centre myself.

With the list of things that needed to be done over the next few days, once home I packed my bag, and found I hadn’t got my purse.  That cold sweat broke out over me as I tried to think where it could be.  The only option was to go back to work to check before the inevitable phone call to cancel the cards.  However, I had an early appointment with the chiropractor in North Essex.  As it was one of those ‘on top of things days’ I had built in some time to the schedule, thank goodness, so I got back through the rush hour traffic, into school and sure enough, my purse was just where I thought it would be.  Relief flooded my body, but now I needed to get out of Norwich and back south. 

I do like learning about places, finding out the layout, and that’s one of the traits I shared with the Last Man.  We would enjoy just turning down a lane and finding out what was there, investigating the joy of the new.  I had thought it was only me that relished this process of discovery and it was a great delight to find we could share this, a sign, perhaps of our deep compatibility. As I brace myself to be brave yet again, I tell myself there must be more to it than that, must be somehow. 

My sense of direction means I can usually find my way round a new place, and quickly put together a map of what goes where, and so I plotted a route out of the city I wouldn’t normally use, but thought it might be quicker than re-tracing my steps back.  I like to think I was right, I’ll never know, but it was interesting to try something, even under this tension.  I try not to think about how much tension I live with, but my chiropractor brought it to my notice last Wednesday.

I got down to her practice just about on time, having driven all the way from Norwich.  I’ve been going to her for years, she’s a friend as well as my chiropractor and someone I love dearly.  She’s a good enough friend to tell me things for my own good but in a kind way.  I have intermittent back ache, largely wear and tear, and partly to do with my own posture.  Occasionally I have accidents that put things out of alignment, but most of the time my body does what I want it to because I see my chiropractor regularly and she stops anything becoming too major.  It is useful seeing someone over a long period of time because she knows my body, knows how it recovers, knows what the strengths and weaknesses are, and thus we have built up a relationship of trust.  As she poked and prodded I was in a lot of pain with my lower back and she has said I have sacrolilitis, an inflammation of the soft tissue around the sacrum, the tail bone to you and me.  As ever I asked what caused it, and she said ‘tension’. You may think that’s something of a get out clause, but remember, she knows me well, and it made me realise I may be putting on a very brave face, but that doesn’t mean the rest of me can quite live up to that ideal.

This may make you question how this can be a ‘content’ moment.  In a funny way it was, because I have been aware of being very numb, and it’s given me permission to let go.  Which could have something to do with how I reacted to DIY: SOS The Big Build later that night.  Always a tear jerker, I found myself sobbing at the pathos created for us, and great relief afterwards.  I had let myself go at last, and now the next stage can begin.