I’m not sure if it’s a complaint, and it certainly is not a boast, but in my forty plus years on this planet I’ve experienced pain beyond my years.

Since my mid twenties I have had a variety of pain, mainly in the legs and back which was not able to be eliminated by conventional means at my pay grade.

I’ve spent, and probably will spend again, hours in pain doing the simplest jobs if they involved standing for more than four hours at a time and the conditions have admittedly left a lot of life on the cutting room floor.

However, I can say that of the pain I have experienced, back pain and tooth pain are the worst forms I’ve ever had and seemingly the most debilitating as well.

However, my back pain in the past, even the bout I had earlier in the year, did not have the radiating annoyances that are all part of sciatica, the pain that can at higher levels make it hard to sit, stand, walk, and possibly even find a comfortable position to rest in bed in.

The first day was OK, felt like regular back pain until I made the mistake of falling asleep on the couch that had caused me to start feeling twinges in the first place.

When I awoke, I could not sit upright without pain and then spent the next two weeks being bedridden besides short bathroom trips and fixing meals for myself.

In some ways it was an awakening experience, considering that it made me more self aware of the mitigating factors of sciatica, like carrying extra weight or the years of smoking I did before finally ditching them last year.

Relief tactics varied, from heat to ice to walking it out (which I could not do) to those pages that said there was no method to really help the healing process besides time.

That, along with losing my main source of income after it closed without warning a few days earlier, lead me to being a bit down while lying down.

Having a back that goes ‘out’ as it were once or twice every couple of years or so, I had experience in being bedridden and bored, but usually the rest of my situation was not as depressing so it was only boredom.

So it began…

The next couple days were spent in a depressing state, not able to think any direction but down.

Depression always leads to anger for me, usually taken out on those close to me sadly, and this time was no different…a close friend got annoyed with me, it was the only place I felt comfortable venting even in a negative manner so ‘better out than in’ so I did.

And for that I apologize.

It was through that friend, however, that I found my way back out through spirituality, not in the sense of scripture or study but more in a reflection of who I am.

And for that, it was worth the pain and being stuck in a bed for two weeks.