Reframing the Pain
How My Sciatica Is Helping Post-Election
I’ve been thinking about starting a SubStack for a while. As a writer, it seems to make a lot of sense. It keeps me writing, even if it’s not my playwriting and it would give me space to explore a lot of other thoughts that could feed my playwriting. Historically, journals could do that, as well and I do still keep those but I’ve adapted to the technology of the computer so much and, let’s face it, we all know that I’m an extrovert so it’s easier for me to write if I think people are listening (or, in this case, reading).
Reframing Pain
As many people know, I have been working through sciatica pain for almost exactly five years. It will be five years on November 16, thank you very much. My current PT, whom I have just started with, has been trying a new method: reframing the pain. He’s got me working on new exercises, listening to podcasts and writing responses to them. One of the things that I am learning is that, as I am in more pain, I can become more protective of my body in ways that are not as useful and are, actually, hurtful. So maybe I decide not to do things that I should do or maybe I sit rather than walk when I’m in pain.
But this post is not, in fact, about my sciatica.
Starting in college, I started signing people up to vote. I stood outside the dining hall for hours, year after year. When I graduated, I worked with an organization for people with disabilities as a volunteer manager and we stood in Union Square and signed people up to vote. In 2016, I phone banked for two months for Hillary Clinton and then got on a bus and went to West Philadelphia to sign up voters. When November came, I was so crushed. I had believed so hard that she would win and wanted it so badly. In addition, I have a thing about wasted time and this pushed that button hard. What had I done it all for?
This year, I was elated when Kamala Harris took the reins for the election. I was inspired by the Democratic Convention. I attended a virtual meeting for a group that was organizing. They talked about phone banking and canvassing. I knew I couldn’t canvas now. The sciatica would not let me be on my feet for that long. Phone banking had been so hard in 2016. I felt that I needed to protect my mental health from direct contact. I had other skills: I was a former volunteer manager. I could coordinate. I finally was tipped to an opportunity to be a dispatch for drivers for the day of Election Day. The short version of that opportunity is that it fell apart. I felt desperation in my heart as we neared the election, knowing that I wasn’t doing everything in my power to help.
But it wasn’t until after the election that I realized what I had done: I had been so protective of my potential pain, just like the sciatica, that I had contributed to a worse pain. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not taking the entire election result on my shoulders. But there are probably many people out there who are just like me: tired, distressed at the idea of engaging in conversations that could be hard, and frustrated that we’re where we are at all. But my actions created a nice, safe, protective bubble around me where the echo chamber said what I wanted to hear, even though I was aware of the other points of view that existed elsewhere.
I protected myself from the pain of those other points of view. I protected myself from hearing the racism, the misogyny, the sexism, the hate because in my gut, I wanted to believe that people are good. I have always been accused of being an idealist and I’ve worn the badge rather proudly, often to a fault. A life long Mets fan, I’ve been taught “Ya Gotta Believe” and, as a fan of “Ted Lasso”, I would also put a posterboard of the word “Believe” above my doorway, if I found it motivating. That is who I am. And it is why it is so hard to look at humans and understand how they find fault with someone they love or what they look like or how much money they make or what gender they are. It’s not that I don’t understand the concepts surrounding hate; it’s that I don’t want to make space for hate in my life. And that’s probably what I was protecting myself from when I wasn’t engaging as deeply as I could have.
So how can I reframe this pain that I am experiencing? I have a lot of guilt. I can own it. But, as with my sciatica, I need to work through the pain. When there is a pressure point for my leg, it is more helpful to breathe into it rather than screaming as screaming will only tighten the muscles surrounding the pressure point. Screaming on social media about the election will not help me; it will only create more stress and pain. I will need to figure out how to refocus my energies to reframe my pain around this to be productive.
What you can expect from future posts…
Not everything will be this heavy. As you can imagine, this is that kind of week. I will also update you on things happening in my writing life, plays that I might be seeing or reading or other stuff that is going on.
As a subscriber, the big bonus that you will get is installations of a darkly humorous monologue that I started in January about my long term relationship with my Epilepsy care and sciatica care.