When Afflictions Feel Like Inflictions

I once was fast and so athletic. Bad afflictions? I had none. Measles, mumps (the normal things). Youth was so much fun. Then came my childbearing early 20’s. Had a girl and then a boy. Affliction borne for but a day and then you’re left with joy! Pregnancy discomforts, flu, perhaps a cold or two. Woes emotional I also had like many people do! Life felt pretty good; I hadn’t known pure agony - the kind that comes and seems to stay for an eternity. Then came my 30’s. Oh the pain! My neck was always sore. I had to seek a chiropractor just to know what for! My neck was curved wrong; something from my childhood, he said. Two years of torture barely even straightened up my head! My 40’s came and with it came degenerative disc. High impact exercise for me was now too much a risk. Adjusting exercises, I thought I’d be ok. Then in my 50’s something came to plague me every day. Hubbie lost his job. We had no insurance, so I lived with agony, the worst that up till then I’d ever know. Hit from behind by a car. They said that must be why a bone spur started growing. I felt like I could die. Couldn’t raise my left arm high enough to change a blouse. At last I got insurance from the new job of my spouse. The bone spur got shaved off, but bursitis had come too. For two more years, the pain remained. The grief that I went through! My neck, my back, and shoulder now were just a “little” bad, but then I got some news that made me very scared and sad. As into my early 60’s I had onward pressed, I found a lump! I had been cursed with cancer of the breast. This pain was more emotional. I felt a lot of stress. Finding out it was genetic made my hope grow less. I let the doctor take control; how I wish I could go back and turn down my “after treatments” inflicted by that quack. It’s been at least four years now; I live with rare effects that make my life a Twilight Zone. I feel like I’ve been hexed. My nervous system is a wreck. There seems to be no cure. My mouth, my back, and all my toes are alien for sure! I wonder if in some past life I brought bad karma on, Are all these things INFLICTED? I wish they would be gone! Then I think of people born with disabilities: the blind, the lame or those with an incurable disease. I know I have more empathy compared to in my youth. I also like to think that God would have me speak my truth. My latest tribulations I can directly blame on Big Pharma. It’s corrupt. Avoid their evil game! I cannot know what waits for me five more years from now. But I thank God for all the good I’m blessed with anyhow! Aug. 8, 2020 for Silent One's Inflictions Poetry Contest