I threw my back out, really far out. I mean I can’t believe how bad it is. I cannot walk. I cannot breathe without severe pain, or sit up with ease, or lie down comfortably, or laugh too quickly. I sleep and wake with enormous dread that I might have to get up in the middle of the night, climb or walk down stairs, anything.

I am not sure what brought this on. It is paralysis, to the extent that I can see myself wanting to do something, yet knowing in my heart that it isn’t possible. I am not permanently injured, but the pain feels never ending, like it will forever be a part of me. However, I can feel its transience. It becomes dissatisfied with the area between my shoulder blades, so it moves on to the front of my neck. It remains there, but sends an army of muscle tension to my lower back. There is a coup at my lower back, and the pain rushes back up to the original site between my shoulders. Also, in frustration and rage at this internal warfare, I bit my lower lip, which feels like it is ballooning out in front of my face. My whole body wages war against me, and I feel like I would like to surrender, but how do you surrender your own shell?

There will be less complaining soon. This is the peril of age, when your body starts to rebel against you and there is nowhere to run because you can’t run. Is this the twilight of life when I start to be able to tell the weather from how much fluid has accumulated in my knee? If I were a farmer, I would have some excuse for this muscle wear and tear. If I were a long distance runner, then I could take this type of thing in stride. Unfortunately, I am the most sedentary person there is. Movement seems to always be an enormously daunting task, even when I’m in the most perfect health.

I cannot understand those people who “just have to get out there – it’s a beautiful day!” Who are these freaks? Nature is best experienced through the photographer’s lens, the storyteller’s excitement, the artist’s canvas. You go ahead, I’ll just stay back here.

Laziness seemed to me to be the virtuous choice. A sedan chair is the best way to get there. But unfortunately, I am seeing slowly and clearly that I have been wrong all this time. I have betrayed my own body by not using it. Now I atrophy and feel my cells cry out in torment with every belabored move. I should be better in time, and then I will have to take up some slow water aerobics class just to catch up. Physical therapy looms large in my future. I see parallel bars and mounting frustration, as I scream to the instructors that indeed “I WILL DO IT MYSELF!!!!!!!” I see now that I have to move sometime, and that time has come.

They killed him. I have failed. We have all failed. The world is all failure. I am overwhelmed with sadness. This war is wrong.

No posts for the rest of the week. I am in mourning. There is no light anywhere.

Kim Sun Il is allegedly still alive, being held hostage in Iraq. I am worried. He is 33, so I am his “noona,” older sister. In Korean culture, no matter what , everyone calls each other brother or sister, and the ranking is more important than your name. Being older, I am responsible for him, even though I am American, even though I don’t know him.

He is part of me. I saw his plea for life on the news video yesterday and cried, because it was wrenching and desperate. He is terrified and showing it – adamantly not Korean. We are a stoic and reserved race – at least as far as I know, and this unrestrained burst of fear and emotion, screaming even, is shocking and horrific. My little brother has lost his nation, not the one he lives in, but the Korea that lives in him. He is that scared. I am afraid. My stomach churns with denial and adrenaline. I am locked into Yahoo News, making my wrist swell up with overuse. My sleep is disturbed by visions of the apocalypse, with a kind of ridiculousness that wakes me.

I dreamt that I was attending high school that was under extremist Islamic law. There were jocks walking around with fingers missing, twirling the combination dials on their lockers, giving each other “High Fours” and singing to the tune of “Rock-n-Roll High School”

I don’t care about the sovereignty
Islam – Islamic High School
That’s not government to me
Islam – Islamic High School
Sunni or Shi’ite that’s okay
We all pray to Mecca five times a day
Islam – Islam – Islamic High School

Then in this disturbing, ignorant, racist dream, I saw myself open my eye and take my fingernail and scratch a long, red mark across the cornea, much like that infamous scene in Bunuel’s “Un Chien Andalou.” Then I woke up, realizing I had actually done it. Perhaps I have been living under this extremist Islamic law, which I made up myself and is not real, and I didn’t know it, because it was happening in the dream time.

I think I am so upset by my little brother being held hostage that I don’t wish to see it, and I would scratch my eyes out if I could. But I can’t.

I am getting ready to go out, and I bought the prettiest dress on Brand Ave. It’s bugle beads, white silk, like a ballroom dancing competition gown. You’d put a number on my back, I’d bet.

You never understood the way I dressed. You just walked some paces behind me, embarrassed by my flamboyance, but loving me at the same time. I look really nice, but I don’t know why I am bothering. I am not going to see you. It doesn’t matter. This anticipatory time, the hour before going out, getting my hair and fixing my face just right, because I was going to see you, or you were going to see me, is for nothing. I will put all this makeup on, slick my hair back, get this zipper all the way up on my own, just to hold this vague disappointment in my heart for several hours, holding my breath until I can go home and take off this mask and this dress and get into bed and wonder what happened to us.

It is good some days, bad other days, and it doesn’t really change, no matter how much time passes between now and then, when we were us. You were much more than someone that I loved once, but then again, the way you are and were the kind of spirit cursed to span all time, which I told you again and again. And so continually you haunt me, even though you are far from an apparition. You are solid and opaque like your black tights and undeniably there.

Occasional nights I miss you so badly I will wake up screaming. Alarming, but at least it is at the moment still occasional. It would be funny, if it weren’t my fault. But I left you for dead, even though you were just limping. I got indignant and angry, and now I am too embarrassed to invite myself back into your life. Not that you would want me. You have new friends, new people, no desire to look back. Why should you? But you leave your life, like a door ajar, so I can see inside, but I can’t come in.

The party I am missing carries on without me, and I feel what I have missed like an arrow in my heart. I can cut off the arrowhead and the feathers on the back, but a broken piece remains lodged there still, subtly impaling me forever. I am not aware if I hurt you, but I know I hurt myself by leaving.

You know, there are people that I leave that I never want to leave, but I just do. I am not sure why I do this. They could be lovers, friends, anyone. Once they are close, too close, they are cast out of my kingdom, without reason or logic. When you can identify my faults, define my frailty, expound on my weakness, you become a mirror I cannot resist shattering, and then all your shards are on the ground and will cut me if I try to pick them up. There are a few, unbreakable mirrors, left hanging on the wall, but you are not one of them. Still, I wish to see my reflection once again in your eyes.

I come home, remove this face I have painted on, for no one in particular, and I see myself, refracted, like uneven, jagged triangles of broken glass. I put myself to bed, piece by piece.