Maybe this is your morning.
Your feet hit the floor and your back refuses to cooperate. It takes a long, slow half hour before you feel halfway normal.
At the store you drape yourself over the cart handle. It is not about being tired. Bending forward is simply the only position that eases the squeeze in your spine.
Invitations get turned down now. You can already picture it: a few minutes standing in line, a heavy ache settling into your lower back, a hot line running down one leg, and a frantic look around for a chair.
Perhaps you already had an operation, a fusion or a laminectomy, and were told it was a success.
Yet the pain stayed.
Or perhaps you are still in the queue: shots that wear off within a month, therapy sessions that hurt more than they help, and a doctor hinting that surgery is coming sooner or later.
You have followed every instruction. And the relief never sticks.
There is something nobody has explained to you yet: