When Love Hurts: The Neck Pain Edition

 

This morning (and all thru the night), I awoke to THE WORST pain in my neck….ever!!!!! It ventures from the entire right side of my neck, down into my back and spread across my right shoulder…..it’s a heavy pain….

the type of pain that makes me want to just throw my head over and look down all day…I am about to set sail on a venture of meetings and grab a heating pad in the process, but when I say I am in pain, I mean I am in PAIN!  I can’t hardly turn…I was supposed to go sledding today   Which really pisses me off…it woke me up several times all night, so I lightweight expected it this morning, but this pain is such that it hurts to sit up from laying down. My bed is too soft….its still brand new, but its too soft….and last night, Houston we hit a plateau …. geeez…..

when I tried to reason with myself on whether or not I have ever felt such a hefty dosage of intrusion on one’s ability to keep their head up and even swallow, it reminded me of 7th Grade….

Her name was Leona Love…..and my life was settling into the movie script it has been known to be. 

The stuff that happens to me should never happen outside of a movie…my life has been known to take cues from the 80’s movie “Better Off Dead”. ….stuff that makes me say “why is this even happening or better yet, HOW did this come to happen??” 

Back to seventh grade and Leona Love….I still remember her name….she a very dark skinned girl with short hair that wasn’t considered “cute" or “good”. ….she was picked on and bullied about her looks.  …..we started off cool….I think she was either in a foster home or adopted….I can’t remember much about her full situation…..my recollection, inspired by the pain in my neck/back that I am suffering from as I type, is about that day in the lunchroom…

Shortridge Junior High…..we were probably 12/13 years old….

….The movie that this will begin to parallel (and ultimately drift off into its own) is called “3 O'clock High” …..another 80’s movie (I think…maybe 90’s)….

it was about a bully and a “wimpy” guy that almost accidentally ended up fighting him…..with the whole school waiting for 3 (the time of the fight) to watch….it was one of my favorite movies…..back to that day in the cafeteria….

Leona wasn’t a “big” girl, but she was not small and she was a couple sizes bigger than me and taller than me as well…I don’t remember how our argument started….I just remember us being at our circular tables in the lunchroom, cussing and it getting louder and louder…..

I think I may have said something about her and she heard me…and challenged me to say it again…..I remember yelling at her about having roaches…..I remember the whole side of the cafeteria listening and egging us on, until someone suggested we fight…..I don’t think either of us were prepared for that…..on her end, I think she was tired of being bullied and that day wasn’t the day to fuck with her…..on my end, I think I was talking because other people were and was the only person she heard….I had to stand my ground, but I wasn’t prepared to fight…..I had never even been in one….

Both of our pre-teen brains probably were thinking nooooo, not a fight, as remember, we were once cool….only days prior….but the peer pressure was in effect…..too many witnesses were around and whoever backed off first would look like the punk…..we were both in seventh grade, trying not to feel like the small fish in a big pond to the eighth grade know-it-alls…..

and just like that, a fight was scheduled……3 O'clock (just like the movie) and in the empty parking lot across the street from the school so that, as suggested by others nearby, we wouldn’t get suspended because we wouldn’t be on school property…….

and just like the movie, the hours zoomed by….before I knew it, the school bell was ringing and I was needing to make a decision about whether to get on the bus or go to the lot…..that lot was full of broken glass and gravel (now it houses an apt bldg) …..I didn’t want to fight her…..as time drew near, I wanted to call a truce but I cant remember what techniques I tried and failed at…..as the ending result reminds of how I feel right now…..

I went to the lot….I grabbed big rocks, small rocks…..all kinds of rocks to throw at her….I put together a blueprint in my mind that if I hit her with a rock, I could knock her down and stomp on her…..then run…..what I didn’t put in my head was how many people were coming to watch this fight…..the movie is in full force at this point….it was like the entire school was there…..in my head, I can see them all marching from Shortridge over to that middle sized rock where I stood awaiting my fate….some of my friends came over there and urged me to walk away….but it was tooooo many people standing around……finally, she showed up…..it was us in the circle……

yelling and cussing at each other endlessly as the crowd circling us got more and more rowdy…..someone said fight already…..we pushed each other around for a bit, clearly not wanting to fight each other but both too far in middle to turn back…..eventually, someone put sticks on our shoulder…..

then people started pushing us into each other…..

this went on for awhile and eventually, the pushing from other people worked and we started fighting…..we slung fists and grabbed hair while the crowd yelled and screamed….

and then

I fell……bad bad baaaaad thing….I would have much rather have knocked her out with the rocks that I ultimately tossed out of my pocket….while I was down, about to stand back up, instead of jumping on me and taking advantage of the situation…

she used her weight advantage to her gain…..

and she grabbed me and sat on me.

0_o

She sat, her entire body and weight, on my neck.

there I was, defeated, embarrassed and crying….in pain…..the ultimate loser of the fight but worst than that, I had no one helping to get this heifa off of me…..I couldn’t push her off me….

she was simply too heavy….I sat, bent over, for what seemed like forever, while the crowd watched until someone finally got her off of me

or maybe she  got tired of sitting and got up on her own….

my memories of Leona Love pretty much end after that….

I walked home, with my best friend at the time, Shakira, crying and in pain….my neck felt like all it could do was slump forward….I didn’t think it would ever get right

I didn’t ever expect to get over this fight…..or the embarrassment….I dreaded going back to school…..this isn't how the movie ended….in the movie, the wimpy person wins…I lost….

and I was hurt…..

and my neck today

feels like that day…..I have not felt this pain since then, but instantly was reminded of it when I gauged the levels of pain…..this is that LeonaPain……that NeckSit Shit…When Love Hurts Pain…..it HURTS……a lot….and it did that day…..

when I was a 7th grader at Shortridge….and accidentally wound up fighting Leona in the parking lot across the street….and….got sat on …

but soon

just like then

I’ll stand again. 

*shrug*

 

jY