More, More, More About ME

I think that my sore back is a manifestation of my worst nightmare: an illness or injury or disease that changes things in a Big Way.  This back injury has the feel of something a little more severe.  It may have some staying power.

Maybe my play needs to be the realization that this is the new normal - tight back, a different exercise paradigm, some discomfort.

There's a lesson here.  I can't hear it yet and I don't want anything except to have my back feel the way it used to, and not so long ago.

But then again.  I've continued to exercise every day - an "off" day was some extensive stretching.

Show me the lesson.
Gratitude list.
Positive affirmations.
Work The Steps again, maybe on this physical obsessiveness that I have.

Breathe.
Posture awareness.

I think I'm afraid of dying.
I think I'm afraid of The Big Decline.

I think I'm terrified of getting old.  Everything has been slowing down over the last few years.  My energy level has declined; my mouth was a disaster area and so were my legs (Needles! So many needles!); I had a hell of a case of shin splints after NZ; the whole sinus perforation nightmare; and now my achy back.

All of this on top of the deaths.  All of this stoking the coals of mom's nursing home fires.  It certainly brought my mortality front and center.  The thought has popped into the back of my mind: maybe I'm next.

Most of my journal entries over the last few months have been about my back - in great detail.  The focus is incredible.  The obsessive concentration on my sinus perforation - despite many assurances that the damage could be repaired - and now on my back.  It is a white-hot, laser-like focus.  I think a tornado could blow my house away while I was sitting at my desk and it wouldn't distract me for a second in my obsessive musings on my health.

After a few months of pretty extensive mullings I'm not so sure that the grief component about the deaths is the accelerant here.  I'm beginning to suspect that The End is encroaching on my serenity.  How powerful is the emotional component of our lives - overwhelming the physical part more often than not.

Man, we get some shit wedged in deep.   Be careful what you're telling your kids.