Now that I've had this pain for month after month I have begun to wonder what would happen if I didn't have it anymore. It's become almost a friend, a constant companion: at my side last at night before I drift off to sleep, and hovering, waiting for consciousness, to greet me first thing in the morning, almost like a lover. Everything else is anchored by it, revolves around it. If it wasn't there, I might lose my way. It shields me from things. The ache, the sharp stab, seize control of my attention and hold it suspended from any real engagement with the demands of life. It is jealous of other would-be lovers and holds me hostage in its grip, warning them off with threats of hurting me if they approach too closely or too fast. We are intimate, this pain and I, but I feel other intimacies slipping away.
Because of it, I have begun to hold my eyebrows closer together and down a little, almost like I'm working out a difficult puzzle. But really, I'm holding myself braced, and concentrating, always concentrating on how to do the next right thing without arousing my companion's ire.
The sharp stab in my shoulder is a fixed point, like the pin that holds the butterfly to the cardboard. I don't struggle against it because that just gives it strength. And I feel my life shrinking. Where I used to walk with pride I now walk with fear -- and this I resent, but only meekly. Never before have I had an attitude almost of supplication as a constant background to everything I do. I want to placate someone or something, but although it feels like a living personality, this capricious pain is merely a construct to help me understand and not something I can negotiate with.
I went to the doctor this morning. He is concerned that I don't have a greater range of motion and he is worried that my arm and shoulder might become permanently stiff. When I asked him if that meant permanently painful, he said, "Maybe."
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