Also, ow.
I'm typing this from my Grandma's place, and I've kind of got the shits.
My back is frucking pissing me off. It's worse than it's been in years, and I can't bend or sneeze or ANYTHING without massive amounts of agonising pain. But I soldier on. It's finally cool enough to actually DO things outside the loungeroom (read: the room with the good airconditioner), so I've been trying to get things done as best I can. It still hurts though, and it would be nice if people would get that asking me to get them a drink or pass them the remote or whatever other simple little thing that they don't want to do out of sheer laziness and which I would normally happilly do because I can relate to laziness and I like to help people IS NOT COOL WHEN I HAVE MADE IT VERY CLEAR THAT MOST MOTIONS HURT ME. Grr.
The weather here is beautiful at the moment. It's been raining! There might actually be some green around here soon. January dries everything out and the ground looks so barren and brown and bleak.
HOWEVER, Lucy's 18th is on Sunday, so she wants to celebrate it tomorrow at Bergeragong races. No words can adequately express the epic amount of bitching and complaining and rage she will emit if the races are called off. She's been whinging about her fucking birthday for ages. She doesn't seem to get that not everyone wants to go to bloody Bergerabong (sp?) races. It's not that they don't care about her, they just aren't into the races, or the travelling, or the being there all bloody day, or the paying to get in, or whatever else. She forgoes a traditional birthday party, this is what she has to put up with.
Stop fucking complaining about no one being organised. If you'd had something in town, no one would NEED to organise anything in the first place.
I love my sister. I want to celebrate her birthday with her. But bloody hell am I sick of these frigging races.
And I have to dress up, but with my back bad I will have to wear bloody awful shoes! Just once, just bloody once, I'd like to be able to wear whatever footwear I want, without having to worry about support or thickness or angle.
I just... I hate my back so much. I'm nineteen, I shouldn't be worrying about this sort of thing. I shouldn't be grunting everytime I stand up, or starting everyday by taking Nurofen Plus and whcking the old heat pillow in the microwave.
Know how I got my shorts on this morning? My right lower back is what's hurtung at the moment, so I absolutely couldn't bend without stressing it in some way. So, after slowly and timidly getting both feet in the leg holes, I used my grabby claw to pull the shorts up my legs to where I could reach them without bending.
It's bad enough that I own a grabby claw (those long metal things with a claw at one end, and a handle that makes the claw open and close at the other. Designed for disabled people and the elderly so that they can reach things), but to have to use it to put my shorts on is just too pathetic.
I want to be able to run whenever I want without worrying about the shocks putting pressure on my spinal cord. I want to be able to sleep in any position in any bed without having to support myself with pillows. I want to wake up in the morning and just get up - no stretching, no aching, just up and straight into the day. I want to brush my teeth without noticing how very low our bathroom sink is. But I can't. And it upsets me so much sometimes.
Mum tells me not to complain, not to let my back stop me from doing things, not to use it as an excuse. She says I have to manage it, not let it manage me. But what she just doesn't seem to get, is that part of managing it means not doing things. Not being able to do things. I'm not making a mountain out of a molehill here, I have very serious back problems that DO impact on my life.
I'm not being a sook when I say that I can't sit in a certain chair, or when I ask why the conditioner can't sit on the shelf in the shower so I'm not always bending to pick it up off the floor (and I'm very tall, the floor is a long way down for me). All of these things, these tiny little things that are so easy for her, are really hard for me. My stomach muscles can only support me upright for so long, and standing with my legs spread far apart so that I can wash my face without bending is not how the human body was supposed to do things. Doing things the normal way hurts me, and strains and twist my back in a way that can potentially make it permanantly worse.
Managing it, as the doctors and physios say I must do, involves changing the way I do things so that strain is removed. If I don't tell the people I live and interact with when a problem arises that I need their cooperation over, I can't do that.
I don't make a bigger deal out of it than I need to, I don't use it as an excuse. People don't seem to get that I don't dwell on it, that the pain is very very real and comes sometimes completely out of the blue. They don't get that, when it's really bad, I'm absolutely terrified that it'll not get better this time. That one day, my discs will bulge so much that my already impeded spinal fluids won't be able to get through at all and the pain will be permanent and I'll start having leg problems too. She doesn't get that I'd sooner to completely forget about it. And that to do that, I need to go through years of getting stronger core muscles, of avoiding strain as much as I can.
I have to work around this damn thing, and I do, every fucking day. Normally, I'm fine. I don't draw attention to it. I don't call it a disability. I just go about my day. But some days, not often lately, thank goodness, but some days, it's worse than it normally is. Some days I can't move without pain. Some days I am reminded just how messed up that part of my body is, and just how much worse it could become, and it hurts me, and it scares me, and it really really upsets me.
Some days, like now, for example, I need to be allowed to be depressed, and to whinge about it a little, and to have other people get me a drink or the remote. If I drop something, I need other poeple to bend over and pick it up for me, because I simply can't, and trying just means I'll be like this for longer. My body needs to recover from whatever it was that set it off, and I need to be able to whine without people making me feel bad about it. I'm sore, and I'm terrified, and I can't sleep or do anything, and I need to be allowed to just be upset, without people telling me to suck it in or stop bloody whinging. I want a bit of sympathy from them, or at least for people to leave me alone to recover the way I need to.
I just... I hate my back so much. Mostly I just want it to be better. I want to be normal and healthy. But I can't. And I'm the one that has to deal with that. It'd be nice if people considered that, once in a while.