I Can Do This All Day

Last week … I thought I had scoliosis.

If you’re a Jeff Dunham fan, you should be laughing by now.

Anyway, so, a few days ago, it turned out that I really did have scoliosis. It’s not that severe and it’s not that hard to treat, but part of the treatment is to sit upright all day long, with my back straight and my shoulders tight to the back, the way a normal person should sit. As it is, I never sat right in my life; I was just constantly hunched forward. This is making the right posture very, very painful for me, especially that I have to force it all day long. It’s actually so painful it’s distracting me from work most of the time.

But you know what's getting me through?

Fictional characters.

Ever since I was a little kid, I could relate more to fiction than nonfiction. I’m not sure why; it’s just the way my brain functions. So, I grew a habit of drawing my strength from fictional characters. They change with age, needless to say. When I was about twelve, I used to draw it from Agent Goodspeed, played by Nicholas Cage in The Rock. The man had to stick a really big needle in his heart to survive a deadly poison or gas—can’t remember accurately at the moment. So, whenever I felt pain, especially physical, I would remind myself of all the things that Agent Goodspeed had been through and how he made it to the end. That gave me the strength to carry on.

Last year, I had to walk about four streets to get to my house, but the problem was, I was carrying a very heavy wooden box that contained cacti. Naturally, I couldn’t let the cacti anywhere near my body, so I had to lift them up and carry them all the way while keeping them as far away from my chest as possible. When I got home and put the box down, my arms were shaking all the way up. I could barely lift a pen for a whole day. But you know what had gotten me through that too? Fabian. He’s a character in my book, and he is most probably the most stubborn person you will ever meet. I thought to myself that if Fabian were there, he would lift this heavy box without complaint, no matter how heavy it was. He would keep on going. He would actually make it.

And so I made it.

And for three days now, I have been thinking the same thing about my back and the right posture, but this time, I’m drawing my strength from two characters at once, because they’re both altruistic, the way I wrote about them in my previous post: The Altruist. Those two characters would be Captain America and Sapiens, the hero of my book. Being the author, I know everything that Sapiens has ever been or ever will go through. I remind myself of that whenever I think I can’t do this. If Sapiens were here, he would bear this silently, patiently, without complaint, and though I do complain, I still try my best to get through one day after another of this physical discomfort. Let's just call it discomfort.

As for Steve Rogers, well … I wore a T-shirt yesterday that has his shield on it to remind myself of one single thing ...

I can do this all day.

August 7th, 2019