Waking Up

Sometimes my legs fall asleep, from my numb toes all the way up to aching hips. The ache is dull, muted. Just uncomfortable enough for me to want to move.

But moving requires waking my legs up, and while I am acclimating to the difference, every nerve from my hips down is SCREAMING at me that something is VERY VERY WRONG. Numbness and dull ache have nothing on this screaming. My nerves don’t scream like that on the way down to numbness, why must they scream so on the way back up?

I don’t know, but if I don’t go through it, if I don’t put up with the pain of re-acclimating, I can’t WALK. I literally can not go forward. Even crawling would just induce the pain.

Change is like that. The dull numb ache of being in a bad place is barely bearable, but the pain of trying to make things better SCREAMS. It’s not that big a deal when we know it’ll be over in a few minutes, but when it just goes on and on and on, it often seems like the cure is worse than the disease.

Maybe it is. But the state of being past the curing phase is what we’re aiming for, and the only way to get there is to keep going.

–Ember–