Pro-tip: if you have the opportunity, ask a friend to read this to you while you close your eyes so you can really imagine it.
Hey Spondy,
There’s a thick rigid belt around your hips & a dull pitchfork attached to the inside being pushed firmly against your lower back, forcing your stomach to curve perpetually forward in effort to escape the uncomfortable pressure.
A steel wire strung between your sacroiliac joints (the back of your hips) – drilled into the joints with hot barbed-wire screws – is being slowly tightened across your back, pushing that pitchfork deeper into the base of your spine. It’s progressively aggravating a deep, aching, stabbing pain at the core of your being.
Your body is pulsing with a desire for relief. Anything.
There’s a rope attached to the outside of both hips. It’s being pulled backward, forcing your hips to open slightly outward and making your lower back fold in on itself even more. It’s unnatural, limiting your ability to move your legs. You shuffle step to fight against the simultaneous pushing and pulling from behind. Your hips are fighting to function, but they can really only move a fraction of an inch with each step with this pain and stiffness, so you swing your legs forward to walk. Forward movement is the only option to escape the pressure of the pitchfork, even as you are being pulled from behind.
Large, flat weights are hanging from the front of the belt around your hips, rubbing and rigidly pushing against your thighs, restricting range of motion and weighing down your legs. You can barely lift your legs to push them forward to take a step.
Walking is so hard. Every step hurts more. It’s jarring. Your hips don’t propel you forward, your back doesn’t pull its own weight, your legs are sacks of sand, and you can only manage with an uneven shuffle push-pull of your legs into position. It feels like your spine is settling, crushing in on itself as you jostle it into sediment or quicksand. Or, as Mick Mars puts it, “quick-drying cement growing on the inside of your spine.“ Continue reading What Does Ankylosing Spondylitis Feel Like? Try This Written Simulation.
BeingCharis 