To Live Alone with Injury

I couldn't turn my head or lift my right shoulder. My neck was tilted to the left, tendons and muscles stiff and in pain. My body was exhausted but couldn't lie down; when I did manage to grit my teeth and lie down on my back, I couldn't get up. Resting still was painful, but moving even more so. Swearing increases your pain tolerance, I remembered. I cursed out loud in my room, not exercising any restraint — one of the good things about living alone (thanks, Covid) — sometimes with screams triggered by sudden bursts of pain. I wouldn't know which part of the movement I did wrong; I might be only standing up or walking, and in a split second, I would freeze with that horrid, searing pain buried deep in my muscles and burning through my neck and shoulders all the way to my arms.

It was five o'clock in the morning. I had had the worst neck sprain for days, but I didn't have time for visiting the UHS. I was not so much waiting until one morning when I would be finally free to go and have it checked as hoping it could just heal itself. It would, eventually. But at the time, it seemed the pain would never go away. I got up, folded my blanket into a square and tucked my bedsheet under the mattress, crying, but then even the most mundane activity became so intolerable that I had to stop to cry, the tears nearly uncontrollable — but it wasn't just about the pain. It almost wasn't about the pain...

No one was there. No one was there to put a hand behind my shoulders to offer some strength that I could borrow when I lay in the dark at 4:30, listening to the alarm ringing from across the room, too in pain to get out of bed. In the end, I sat up hissing, alone.

No one. No warm hands. No warm voice, concerned and perhaps good-naturedly nagging about me not taking care of myself. No gleaming eyes looking into mine. I felt angry.

Standing by the sink in front of that mirror lit by dim, greenish light, struggling to get the toothbrush to work in the right directions, I was suddenly in fear of my own ageing, of the prospect of fading away disconnected, isolated, alone. I laughed, remembering that I always prided myself on being able to enjoy solitude. I still did; it was just the pain.

During the day, it got better, and I didn't cry again. I met a friend when taking the lift downstairs to take my temperature, and she gave me a hug, unaware of my physical pain. Her embrace was powerful and warm, and her eyes knowing. As I'm writing, there’s finally some hope for recovery. But if I ever heal, I won't want to forget about the pain. I don't want to grow accustomed to the non-pain and to the hubris of the not-sick. Not ever, ever will I forget how disabling it is when society tries to isolate us, repeating at us, your lives are scarce. I want to remember it forever; even though the remembering offers no comfort, the alternative is even bleaker.

This isn’t really about my pain, after all.

And that's how I wrap up my day: sitting at the desk, jacket on, spine crooked, writing and in pain. People on the streets speak to me from the past, through ink on paper, teaching that the personal is the political, and profoundly so.

Wir lagen zehn Minuten später auf unseren Pritschen. Das letzte Fünkchen im Ofen verglühte. Wir ahnten, was für Nächste uns jetzt bevorstanden. Die nasse Herbstkälte drang durch die Decken, durch unsere Hemden, durch die Haut. Wir fühlten alle, wie tief und furchtbar die äußeren Mächte in den Menschen hineingereifen können, bis in sein Innerstes, aber wir fühlten auch, dass es im Innersten etwas gab, was unangreifbar war und unverletzbar. (Anna Seghers, Das siebte Kreuz)

Everything is forever changing. It's going to get dark on Ma On Shan, which my windows look out to, where I can see the last bit of orange light from the warm, sinking sun: simmering.