I’ve been going to physical therapy for the past few weeks for a flare up of pain and limited mobility in my neck. When I originally spoke to my doctor and when I see different techs at PT, I inevitably get the same question. “What did you do?”
And I wish I had some awesome story, but I totally don’t. It’s a fun mish-mash of “I have no idea” and “well I was at a NOFX concert in California in 1998 and some moron jumped off a fence and landed on my head and caused a whip-lash-like injury” and “I was throwing my toddler in the air” and “I work on the computer all day.”
Right now, according to my PT, a lot of it has to do with bad posture. Really, really bad posture. Apparently the way I sit all day at work is aggravating the old injury and pushing some nerves in my spine toward the edge of my spine or something that involves a drawing and me accidentally doing the finger-in-hole universal sign for “doing it” to my mother-in-law when I was trying to explain.
The “your posture sucks” message is nothing new to me. I hate the way my profile looks. The hunch to my shoulders, the curve of my neck.
I am a caricature of a long-standing lack of self-confidence. By sixth grade, I was 5’7”. Taller than almost every boy in my class. My curly hair gave my head a decidedly mushroom shape. Or at least that’s how the song went. (The one the boys in my class made up and sang at me in the stairwells every day.)
I started hiding behind my hair, keeping my head bowed, my face low. I wanted to slide into the crowd, squirm along the floor if possible.
By high school it was just the way I walked and the way I stood and the way I sat.
Lately, I’ve seen dozens of women giving themselves time to start new fitness routines. It makes me smile every time someone updates Twitter with the result of a run or a workout.
I’ve got to try to piggyback on those efforts, on that inspiration. This posture thing isn’t going to fix itself. I have to fix it. Even if it feels incredibly unnatural—and even painful—to keep my shoulders back and my head straight.
This sucks. It hurts. It hurt to sit for ten minutes writing this. I’m on muscle relaxers and anti-inflammatories and I’m not supposed to be working which doesn’t really work when you’re self-employed. I mean, it works, but you don’t get paid for sitting in bed or wondering if they filmed What Not to Wear seven years ago because seriously Clinton, those shoes are heinous.
Once the initial spasm freak attack has healed, I’m doing my own version of the couch to 5k. The um… slouchy-unattractive-hunch to practically-perfect-posture. Or something.
You can help. Just smack my knuckles when you see me, and snap, “Sit up straight!”
(Seriously.)
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