Hunchback

Something terrible is happening: I’m getting a back problem. It started months ago, with the sore neck here, the odd twinge there. Turns out that was transferred pain. The real source is where my kidneys are, but now I have replaced my pathological fear of kidney failure with the probability of a more muscular complaint, I fear that soon there will be a new entry in my imaginary telephone book, under ‘C’ - for chiropractor. 

Years and years of bad-postured writing at various different desks over the course of my education seem to have collided with the contained hysteria of having no purpose. This has only been exacerbated by several years of intensive typing activities and heaving literary theory textbooks around. My natural posture was never poker-straight, but recently seems to have deteriorated to that of a defiant hunchback; soon I will become shrunken and wizened, like my 90-year old grandmother. 

This evening, I look like a human question mark. I am bent, but not curious. Pain takes the curiosity away. Pain is introspective, it doesn’t give a damn about the rest of the world, it concentrates on itself. Not that I have anything of great note to be getting on with; the extent of my responsibilities are taking the dog to the vet and picking up dry-cleaning. Soon I’ll be retreating back to my tea-stained dressing gown and crappy novels, only bent over in some peculiar position in order to avoid looking like a down-trodden peasant. It brings tears to the eyes and moans to the lips, so god only knows what sciatica is like. 

Lying here, contemplating my gradual descent into muscular agony, a thought has occurred to me. In fact, two thoughts. One is, did my choice of shoes tip my back over the edge and down the slippery slope towards a painful middle-age? Is my rare indulgence in shoe vanity responsible for my worsening condition? I confess that there have been three occasions in which I have fallen off said shoes, whether inebriated or otherwise. Once was in the changing rooms of the shop. So could this be nature’s warning to start wearing MBT shoes in future? Boat-shoes they may be, but they’re kind to the spine... 

The other is, has my pathological hatred of massages aggravated a condition that could have been periodically relieved? I am fortunate enough to have had a number of spa experiences, and each time I have been desperate to avoid the complete torture that is any kind of massage. This is born out of my inability to relax (inherited from father) and irrational intolerance of people that I don’t know ‘touching’ me (also inherited from my father). But of course, each time I declined the opportunity to be pummeled and prodded by a woman in a lilac baby-suit, I was denying my muscles the opportunity to relax just a little. And as a result, they’re punishing me. 

My greatest fear is that I will eventually become a regular viewer of daytime television, although apparently my last three years as a student entitled me to this habit..yet I never felt the need to touch base with ‘Des and Mel’. Regardless, I still fear the possibility that I will grow fond of Jeremy Kyle and his visiting cretins, and may begin to regard them as proper human beings. However, too many other shows appear to rely on the ritual humiliation of members of the public, whether it be demonstrating your rendition of a whale being machine-gunned on X-Factor, or being shouted at by a professional chef because you don’t know what julienne vegetables are. 

In essence, I fear that if this back pain gets any worse, I will spent increasing amounts of my time horizontal on the sofa, with my head at a 45 degree angle at the TV, at a time in my life where spending more time than necessary in a horizontal position is really nothing less than soul-destroying. The purposeless existence of the unemployed English graduate is enough motivation to keep my back teetering on the brink for a while longer, I hope.