The Fallen Shelf

I conned this beautiful, supportive man into a datenight on not-a-date night. I snagged him as he walked in the door with the smell of refried beans and rice with fish tacos on handmade tortillas. Really, he had no chance.

I pulled off the same con two nights in a row! Tonight (which was datenight), I got to take a trip to the pool for a poolside date alla beetroot and apple salad, some Misfit Market mushrooms and veggie patties, but he conned me right back. TWO game nights post-date?! Uho... I'm losing my touch.

Keeping myself in shape and losing some weight along the way. Self care has been incredibly important to me while on medical leave to care for a spinal injury. This pool has been a true asset in my recovery. I am so blessed to have the support and resources available to me, and I am so grateful I can focus on me right now.

The Five Finger Discount

By Sarah Smith @thefallenshelf

6/25/2022

An experiment, they call it.

A sociological assessment,

Quantifying qualitative data.

What privilege do you have?

Raise your hands, high.

Have you ever lived in poverty or experienced homelessness?

I raise five fingers high.

Are you not Christian?

I raise five fingers high.

Raise your hand if you are white or passing--

I raise five fingers high.

--If you’ve ever been subject to racial hatred.

I raise five fingers high.

Are your parents separated?

I raise five fingers high.

You’re mentally or physically disabled somehow?

I raise five fingers high.

Are you LGBTQ? I? A?

I raise five fingers high.

If you are a woman?

I raise five fingers high.

If you have been subject to sexual violence--

My hands are numb.

I raise five fingers high.

Have you been raped?

I raise fiver fingers high.

How many times?

I raise five fingers high.

That was a count.

The professor stares.

I raise five fingers high.

The woman who sits next to me raises two more,

And she still raises five fingers high.

I’ve been counting.

We were a pair that day.

She had all but one of mine,

She’s not passing.

We look at one another.

How many of you have ever had to pay for an abortion?

I felt so blessed earlier today to meet so many people who genuinely wanted to help me in a time of need, while facing adversity from the one person I knew could help me.

My back injury got worse last night. I'd taken my prescribed muscle relaxant, and I was texting my boyfriend over the edge of the bed with a pillow under my belly when I had to sneeze. It felt TERRIBLE for a couple minutes, but with a small adjustment of the heating pad, I felt better than I've felt in a month! I thought I was on my way to recovery.

Then the muscle relaxant wore off after half an hour of being at work. I had felt so good that I forgot to take my daytime Naproxine prescription or turn the heating pad on. It was crippling o.o I stuck it out for a couple more hours before I called my doctor begging to switch my prescription to something more heavy duty than Naproxine, that could be taken during the daytime.

I was bawling my eyes out, wincing at the pain that the huffs I made caused, when one of my coworkers noticed me and grabbed my mom. After a few minutes of very long, hard hugging to release the serotonin in my system and stop the crying, my mom helped me back inside.

Upon arrival to my desk, my boss informed me that it was time to go home. I was no longer welcome to work until I was properly healed. In came my coworker who swooped in for a second time to save me, “Do you need a referral for an acupuncturist or chiropractor?” Honestly, I'd been in so much pain, I couldn't even think of helpful alternative words like, “acupuncture,” and I was in so much pain, I would try just about anything reasonable to make it to away. I wasn't convinced yet, but she offered the name and phone number and sent me on my way.

To get home, I called a Lyft, and my driver immediately asked me what was wrong. As it turns out, he has personal experience with the slow leveled step into a car that is a trademark of lower back pain. By the time I got out of the car, I had another number in hand: the marijuana dispensary he used to work for.

Getting home, I got a call back from my doctor's office. Unwilling to budge, her assistant cited her lack of interest in ever prescribing a narcotic. I hung up the phone, and immediately called urgent care and verified that they, in fact, did not share the same beliefs toward narcotic pain relievers under the right circumstances. Getting an affirmative answer, I asked for the wait time, and the receptionist told me it would be an hour to hour and a half, but then asked me to hold the phone. When she got back on, an emergency had occurred, and the wait time was, now, 3 to 3 and a half hours. I thanked her and checked my voicemail.

Low and behold the acupuncturist was returning my call, and could squeeze my in last minute before taking off for the weekend to Washington. My landlord also got back to me, allowing me to borrow his jacuzzi for a bit to take the weight off my back. With an hour to kill, I did just that!

Finally, at the accupuncturists office, I found a man willing and ready to listen to my aches and pains, sort out a priority, and aim for a goal. 2 hours later I could walk upright with little to no pain in my back, relaxed, and renewed.

My dad picked me up and offered to take me to an astrophysics documentary, but started explaining the placebo effect and dragging me out of the necessary head space go not focus right back in on where the pain would have been. Iiiiii opted to get another Lyft home, just in time to be offered one of my landlord's pot brownies, specially designed to take away pain and relieve stress.

Soooo I injured my back. You know, that thing I was trying to prevent by easing back into the gym? It happened. I was about 2 weeks into my new gym membership. I have a very fragile body right now. As mentioned in previous posts, I recently spent over a year in poorly ventilated environments with limited access to sunlight, nutritious food, a steady income, stable social relationships or regular exercise. With these things in mind, I’ve been taking it easy. I have been working diligently with the gym staff to make sure that my future work outs reflect the precariousness of my situation. Unfortunately, with such a high level of risk, injury is almost certainly expected. It’s just a matter of time. This time, it was a matter of strength.

Have you ever heard of Boat Pose? Iiiii was a much stronger, flexible, lighter person that last time I heard that name, and had all but forgotten what it entailed, so I tried it! As usual, my biggest weakness is my ego. I was overconfident, and I did too much too quickly. In hindsight, had I thought through how hard it was to make the first attempt at the pose, I should have sat out that part of my yoga session, and waited for the next move instead of gradually trying to ease into. The reality is, my yoga instructor is 100 LBs. My yoga instructor has never been 200 LBs. My instructor was also online in a recording. The fact that this, “Beginner,” pose is still hard for said instructor should have been enough to steer me away from it, despite previous experience, in light of my situation, but I made a decision, and now I am suffering the consequences.

Here are a few things I’ve learned since injuring my back a weak ago:

Just because it feels fine in the moment doesn’t mean that you aren’t injuring yourself. I’ve heard that rats can be boiled alive by putting them in water, and steadily increasing the temperature of the water. I’m too chicken to find out if that’s true, but I can at least say that I felt fine until I woke up the next morning with searing back pain and an inability to utilizing my full range of motion. This sounds more minor than it was: my gate was baby steps, and it only got worse as the day went on and I got more active. Ibuprofen didn’t work at all, no matter how high the dose. It felt so bad that I started breaking into my stash of old prescriptions to see if anything on hand would work.

Back injuries make muscle and joint issues feel like everything is the problem! I swear it hurt more in the inflamed areas I already had more than in the area the pain was emanating from.

Desperation does not read well in a doctor’s office. If you say, “I took Vicodin,” the doctor doesn’t hear the, “once,” part, or the implication that said doctor was not yet accessible at the time.

Masseuses are amazing. I don’t normally trust masseuses with my body. I tend to be pretty good with self-massage, but when your body is broken in a hard to reach place, sometimes a girl has to know when to ask for help. My masseuse was able to identify key problem areas in my body, and bring context to an incredibly painful circumstance.

Ask for another doctor immediately if things start going south. Don’t spend extra money on an X-ray to humor the doctor who doesn’t believe you when the pain you are experiencing is muscular. X-rays are for bones. MRI’s are more expensive, but if your doctor is already hostile, finding an accurate diagnosis is going to be tricky.

Be nice to your pharmacist, even if you’re in pain, they’re taking too long, and they’ve messed up 3 times, already. They are the only people who can effectively advocate for you to get your prescription switched.

Wear the back brace. It is a life saver that will gently coax your body into acting normal again. The pain killers help ease the tension, and make things less swollen, but it’s up to you to make your body whole again. Structural aids go a long way to help reclaim that autonomy to help yourself.

Welcome back! A lot has happened in the past year or so. I quit a stable job that was (literally) killing me. I lost a job I really liked, but just wasn’t good enough. I went through 3 months of unsecured employment (that’s my fancy way of saying I was a temp, and grabbed every odd job I could get my hands on), and I’ve spent the last 2 months in a new job I love with people I cherish. That’s just the occupational aspect of my life, but I can finally say: things are looking up around here!

Along with my new job, I relocated back to the town I grew up in (not that I’d moved far from it to begin with). I now live with 3 room mates, 2 of whom have spent the past few years renovating the place. At the beginning of the year, I was still living in the same fixer upper studio I’d lived in for 5 years, and it was still a fixer upper. Intermittently, I moved out of town to the cleanest air I could find in the area, but landed in an apartment with 3 guys who saw me as their mother, and kept absolutely nothing clean, air included. Meanwhile, in a convoluted twist in fate, my dad moved into said fixer upper. The Fallen Shelf is currently in storage, doing its job, and currently not falling apart for the moment.

I mentioned the clean air thing? Yeaaaah, um, so I went through an episode of Revenge of the Asthma, and for the first time in a decade, I was weaker and more immobile than I’ve ever been. I got pneumonia twice in an 8 month period and still had time to get eye surgery to freeze my eye in place, because the top layer of skin was coming lose (yeah, I know, gross, mhm).

I’ve gone from making all of my own meals, to existing solely off of fast food, to gradually being able to bring healthy cooking back into my life, and at one point being so poor that I was only so lucky to have an oven around to cook my own sourdough bread in.

It wasn’t all bad, though. My housemates took pity on me when I lost my job, and my landlord adjusted my rent so that I could still live in the space while I got back on my feet. There were ugly moments of me kicking and screaming despite other people’s kindness. Let’s be real, when you’re miserable and just trying to survive, there is always something to complain about. No excuses, just reasons and reactions.

I made some pretty awesome friends, lost some others, and secured a high school friendship to last the ages. I went through a tortured relationship with a very insecure person who was friends with my worst enemies. I actually had enemies. Finally, I met someone who, like anyone still has insecurities, but we have a wonderful relationship I wouldn’t trade in for the world. It’s hard not to make comparisons on past relationships, when the guy you’re dating is everything you ever wanted in a relationship and more.

It’s true, things are seriously looking up around here. I’m even finally filing through all of my possessions and, uh, “cleaning out my closet,” you might say. And it’s true, I live in a reno, a flippers’ reno. It’s not going to last, here. Everything is constantly changing, but that’s just motivating. In the coming months, I plan on recapturing my life, getting my driver’s license (finally!), and working toward converting a van to hit the road and explore this beautiful continent we live on. Hopefully Count Basey, my basil plant, will survive the transitions! Wish me luck!

As I sit in my new room, surrounded by displaced pans, mugs, baskets, wires, and boxes filled with unnamed treasures, I am battling two perspectives. One is a fearful scope of my past: a gooey, splattering mess I am trying to outrun, feeling like I may never make it, and as it catches up to me and grasps at my ankles, I shrink into it like a comfy old couch, telling myself, “You’ve spent months working on this, “hopeful,” bullshit, and you’ve gotten nowhere!° The other is the reality of how said hopeful perspective is paying off.

For instance: I am no longer unemployed, subsisting on temp jobs (no matter how much I loved the rush and instability of it all). I have a storage unit where I keep all of my art supplies and excess clothes in the furniture I decided not to move with. I’m surrounded by people who are uncertain of me for, instead of people I have been certain I don’t want to be around for a while. I’m breathing fresh air without my purifier running 24/7. I’m in a relationship with a wonderful young man who surprises me every day with the ways he expresses how much he likes me back. My relationship with my dad is healing from the turmoil of misunderstandings, and power struggles (a.k.a. we finally both see each other as adult human beings in the world, trying to get by). My mom and I have come to several new understandings about each other as well. I communicate with my sister. My relationship with my living grandparents is becoming less strained. I have hope for relaunching promising careers in art and writing, while still managing my day job (and they don’t mind that I treat it as a day job so long as I show up and work hard every day). I’ve regained some of my will to live and find out what’s really out there in the world. I have rekindled my fascination with trains and aforementioned art. I live in an amazing new home with people who have been putting tons of care into making it one of the most amazing works of interior and exterior design I have ever seen with my own eyes, and I am challenged every day to be myself and come out of my shell.

I am no longer in an abusive romantic relationship. I am overcoming the abuses of my past. I am still securing myself in my own identity. I recognize myself when I look in the mirror. I will soon be able to cook healthy food for myself without sacrificing my lungs. I am making a few new, good friends who help me strive to be the person I want to be. My new coworkers are great, too!

Truly, things are getting better. I simply have to acknowledge it. Thus, I am starting to commit myself to writing this blog and contributing to its content. Hi, we’ve possibly met before, but I might have lied about my name. My name is Sarah, and I’m looking forward to the future. Thank you for coming.

The name of this blog, for me, was a little tongue-in-cheek. I’ve always been a creative person, but I haven’t always lived alone in my own small apartment. As with any small apartment, it’s not exactly ideal for productive living. The storage is at a minimum. The needs in my life form around the pitfalls of the sacrifices which made the rent so appealing. There is a lot of character in the place I live, but not exactly my own character. In fact, I often find myself in outright denial that this is my own home at all. One thing I know is mine, and I hope will always be mine is a storage solution I’ve had since I was a kid. Where I go, it goes.

This item is my bookshelf. It was given to my mom by one of her best friends. We’ll call her Kathy. Kathy used it as a media cabinet and entertainment center. It was gorgeous bare pine wood, and it was an enclosed cabinet. I was obsessed with the thing while it was in Kathy’s house as an 8 year-old child. It was made of unfinished wood, and it hid the TV. What do you expect from a budding DIYer at the age of 8?

When Kathy gave it to my mom for holding kitchen items, I was ecstatic to have it in our house. Eventually, we moved, and no longer needed it for such items. We did, however, suddenly need a new bookshelf, so she adjusted the shelves, and voila! We had an enclosed bookshelf. The use of this shelf would remain this way for another 10 years, until I moved out with it and all of my books. Thank you, Mom!

At first, it was my kitchen prep-station. Then I gradually acquired more furniture to take its place. This was nice, because the boxes of books were cluttering up my studio. By this time, the fasteners are thereabouts of 15-20 years old. They’re brass, and they’re weaker than they used to be, as a consequence. On top of this, my book collection is several times its original size. No matter how I organized it, several months in, I would set the wrong book on the wrong shelf, and one of its half-inch, socket-insert, corner brackets would fail. The happened so often, that I stopped fixing it on the spot, and simply taping a danger sign to the doors of the cabinet, “Danger: Fallen Shelf,” “Don’t Even Bother,” “Stop! All reading shall cease, until shelf improves.” Obviously, it had turned into a running, personal joke.

The day I decided to create this blog, I had been uploading old pictures to my computer, when I came across a cellphone photo with the taped sign saying, “Danger Fallen Shelf,” appeared in the stream of photos. I laughed. It was perfect. I had just hatched a plan to reinvigorate my home for the umpteenth time, and reorganize my living situation, and the bookshelf was soon-to-become a clothes press. The sign symbolized all of the upheaval in my life, expressed plans to make things better, and motivated me to do something creative with my living space. Alas, a name was born. A project was launched, and my goals changed.

What Diet? : A Thought or Two by SD Smith

I’m not a clean person. I like to clean things, and I like when things are clean, but I am still not a clean person. I’m not a skinny person, either. (cut) See? I have fat. (cut) But I’ve struggled with weight issues the majority of my life. That’s actually why I’m larger. I over-exercised and under-ate as a child. Now, it’s not easy for me to lose weight.

Luckily, I’m not sixteen, anymore. I’ve come to a point in my life when being larger and being messy are not such large point of contention in my life, anymore. I’m not perfect. I still compete with myself from time to time to eat healthier, but I’ve decided that that just isn’t my focus. . I could wallow about my weight or my monetary situation, or my ability to access certain items in my house, but I’ve decided to do something different. It’s not a new concept, and some people may just refer to it as, “the pursuit of health—y,” but I’m going to name it “The What Diet?”.

The What Diet is not nutritionist recommended. I am no medical physician. Health is obviously not my expertise, but this concept is a big part of what makes me happy, and for all of the people I know, happy tends to be somewhere on the top of the list of things they wish for. I’m not always happy, either, but I’m happy with myself. I’m glad I am who I am. Sometimes I struggle with the What I Am, but Who is doing okay. The What Diet gives me groundwork for being happy.

Basically, it’s this: I eat what I want, when I want, how I want, with who I want, without personally imposed limitations. Obviously, if I can’t afford it, I won’t eat it; but if I can, I already ate it. I wanted chocolate peanut butter cups, tonight. I have $20 left for 4 days of food. I bought just over $2 of peanut butter, because it made me happier to not want them anymore.

I had trouble with bulimia and anorexia as a teenager. Like any teenager, it was not my finest hour. I was acting out against myself, because bullies and magazines and teachers and doctors told me that my weight was a problem I had and I believed them, accordingly. I tried to control this situation by doing something that everyone said was worse than being fat. I stopped eating, then I ate too much until I got sick, then I threw it all up. It wasn’t pretty, and I eventually found myself anemic, curled up in a ball in front of the front door, crying and screaming to my mother that I was in pain, and that I couldn’t diet anymore. I got help, I got better, and eventually, I got here, ten years later. It was a lot longer process than I realized it could ever be to recover, and understand what it meant to stay in recovery forever.

For me, rebellion was the only thing that would ultimately save me. If I rebelled against the bullies, they could no longer hurt me. If I rebelled against my parents, they would learn that well-intentioned attempts to make me healthier were evidently hurting my psyche, and I was taking their words the wrong way, so I needed their help to stop that from happening. If I stopped reading books on nutrition and listening to teachers who told me not to show my bra straps, I would eventually break free and become a self-sufficient, well balanced human being—I’m still working on that last part, and I may never achieve it, fully.

The What Diet embodies these notions of self-sufficiency. It says, “I’m good enough a judge of my own food intake.” It nods to the age old idea of gluttony being a sin of greed and food, politely, and turns away. It looks that apple dead in the eye, and remembers that an apple a day could cause diabetes. If it doesn’t keep the doctor away, then maybe the doctors are still wrong about some things. Maybe I’m okay with getting cancer in a couple decades if it means that I eat something that we’ll find out causes it indirectly, tomorrow. Maybe I’m okay with not exercising every day, because diabetes or high cholesterol may be my problem five years down the road. I know for a fact that I could also lose my ability to walk if I carelessly over-exercised every day. Maybe the health that I’m looking for is a health in my mind. Maybe my body is 200 pounds. Maybe that’s a good thing. Yeah, it was REALLY cool to be 155 2 years ago, but I don’t want to BE my weight anymore. Like, I am not fat, I have a fatter belly than socio-philosophical ideologies of my time and place designate acceptable.  I don’t have the time, or energy, or support from my peers, or security to be left alone that I did 2 years ago. I would LOVE to dance every night, in public, without people following me home, and wake up for work on time the next day, if I could, but I can’t, and I don’t want to get hypothermia 4 times this year. Learning about Michael Jackson’s contribution to the world of hip hop at 3 AM and 32° is not the way I want to have my dancing appreciated, now, or then for that matter. It’s also harder to find new and inspiring music, these days.

When I first started this blog, I was feeling ambitious. I’m a generally ambitious person, so this isn’t entirely out of character. I am, however, prone to a lack of focus, especially when I really care about something. I psych myself out. I put it up on a pedestal and then I run from its greatness. I do this with a lot of things in life. I do it in relationships, with work, with cleaning my room. It’s a personal flaw I’m fully aware of and work on every day.

For now, instead of being so ambitious, and getting my room photo ready for before and after pictures, I think I’m just going to create the content that I can when I can. There won’t be a strict schedule. It won’t always be about the same thing. I’m finding that I really like talking about gender roles, street dancing and linguistics these days. I used to hate having anything to do with politics.