The Lighter Side Of Pain

It’s astounding how kind your body is to you when you’re young. It works really really hard to keep all your bits fine-tuned, so that you can do all the things young people do. Pick-up basketball game after work? I’ll make sure your legs are springy! You feel like running? I’ve taken every piece of candy you ate today and turned it into ENERGY! You enjoying this sassy novel? No, no! Keep reading well into the night! Sleep is on a credit system!

Unfortunately, when you reach a certain age, your body starts to get reaaaalllll stingy with its resources, and stops funding the parts you don’t use all that often. Quit tennis, and your shoulders weaken. Sit too much and your butt collapses like a souffle. And, in my particular case—draw 16 hours a day and the only thing that won’t hurt is your right arm.

The only upside to this is that you start building a relationship with pain that’s harder to cultivate when you’re younger. When you’re young and healthy, pain is something to ignore, to push through, because it’s important that you beat Final Fantasy 7 before the semester is over. But pain is your body’s way of speaking to you. And if you spend a lifetime ignoring its messages, when you actually need to have a conversation, you can barely understand each other. “Hey! You!” your body will scream at you one day, “Something’s wrong!!!”

“What!?” you ask.

“I DON’T KNOW!!!” your body will reply, “Start complaining! To everyone!” And then it’ll spam you that same message 1000 more times while you crumple into a ball on the roller rink floor, clutching your ankle and tossing off enough f-bombs to make someone named Katie forever remember her 7th birthday party as ‘the worst’.

The solution to avoiding this sort of communication breakdown is, unfortunately, to start using ALL those neglected body parts again. It’s a bummer amount of work. Frankly, if I knew I’d have to learn so much about medicine and body mechanics later in life, I’d have spent less time playing videogames and more time… hmm, I don’t know… performing world-class surgery. But it has made a difference. Conversations with my body go a lot smoother.

“Excuse me,” says my body, in a theoretical scenario, “Have you noticed anything unusual happening around the neck?”

“Oh,” I say. “I drew all day yesterday, and since my right arm needs to be free, my left arm spent all day supporting my trunk, so my trapezius and sternocleidomastoid and levator scapulae have all tightened up and are pulling on my vertebrae. Oh, also—expect a little weirdness in the hip, because I’m instinctively planting my left foot too, so my iliopsoas are getting overwhelmed. Don’t be surprised if the groin feels off! But I’ll take it easy today, I promise. I even invented an exercise to help! I call it ‘The Majestic Bird’!”

“I don’t care about your boring nerd shit,” my body says, “Just stop ruining all my amazing handiwork.”

Still not ideal, I guess. But the takeaway here is—much clearer message.

Of course, this makes me wonder about all the other things my body pings me about that I might be misunderstanding. Like, I dread driving. But what if the feeling that I’m interpreting as dread is actually something other than a feeling? What if it’s my body trying to tell me important stuff like “There’s not enough air in your tires!” or “You’re dangerously low in Vitamin D!” What is the system that I know so little about, that I won’t understand its signals until it’s too late?

Makes you think.

Oh— while I have you here…

This Saturday April 12th, from 12-5pm, I will have a table at Lancaster Zinefest. If you’ve never been, Lancaster has a fantastic and supportive artistic community, and the fire of creativity burns hot there. It’s also located at their delightful Southern Market, which has a plethora of interesting restaurants and delicious drinks to fill your belly and slake your thirst. I’ll even be selling a new zine— “An Evening With Birthday Street”, featuring some of my best Birthday Street comics ever!

Attend ye, and have no regrets!