OK. Give me a bit to eat something, and I'll do some general takes on this.

It's a good piece, and I know from pain....

Steph, one thing I really like about it is that the whole rhythm of the piece, the way you've handled sentence structure and such, has a very appropriate raw immediacy to it.

Steph, email or here? What's your pref?

Whichever you want, Deb. I don't mind public feedback, as long as the phrase "illiterate git" is used sparingly....

Addendum: I've reached a comfortable pain-management point (finally!), so I'm going to take advantage and go to sleep. I'll look forward to your comment in the morning, Deb.

Illiterate git? Ha! As my Japanese friend Reiko said, when her husband was transferred to Teheran in the late seventies and assumed she'd go with him, "Fat-o Chance-u."

In re the piece, it's quite powerful, and I'm with Susan on the sentence structure adding immediacy to it. But I would make one general comment: I think the sheer quantity of adjectives weakens its impact. We have a cornucopia of adjectives: we have searing, sharp, unrelenting, burning, pulling, aching, and those are in the second paragraph. So the reader is reeling, and that's good, because it has the ring of an arrow hitting home, whang in the gold.

Third paragraph, "And the pain is constant. It's always there." OK, it's horrendous and it's always there and the details you gave of it made my own tum tighten up, because I live with numb-tingle-roar, so to me? Very real indeed.

However, you weaken the impact:

Fourth paragraph, there's more: constant, aching, burning. Followed immediately by "it's always there". If this is deliberate, an emphasis thing, could you clarify that, somehow? Because, as written, I'm reading and saying, OK, but we've established that and repeated it and described it up above, so....? The second half of that paragraph is sensational, by the way.

Paragraph 5 made me jump. Beautiful, simple, evocative and real.

Penultimate paragraph sums it up, perfectly. And it also makes the final paragraph yet another repetition, and I think not needed (or at least find a way to extract whatever will feed the penultimate, and combine them.)

Any help?

I think my absolute favorite moment is

So I snap. I snarl. I click my teeth together furiously, like a wounded animal who doesn't know how else to react other than to bite out of fear and hurt and helplessness

That's quite excellent, I think.

And I think that if I could change one thing, it would be the first paragraph:

It consumes me, devours me whole. It's become the primary focus of my every waking moment, an overlay obscuring everything else in my life, my mind, my body. Above everything I do, my overriding awareness is of pain. First, last, and always.

-- it is, I think, kind of overstatedly dramatic? (I am approaching this completely as a work of writing, as you asked, and as is, I think the only useful sort of feedback I can give. Still, I hope that I'm not coming across at all as callous.) If it were simpler, it might be a more compelling beginning. Is my feeling.

'allo, Rebecca my one true love.

I left the beginning alone, so as not to touch the emotional content at the opening.

You are not coming across as callous.

You are not coming across as callous.

(I was just checking. Because sometimes I get paranoid; and I worried that some of the people in this thread don't have... the ability to get the same degree of detachment from writing's subject as I have, and they would think I was being insensitive? I do know from past discussions here that I'm kind of on the extreme end of that scale.)

(And *now* I'm worrying that those hypothetical Buffistas will read this and take offense at the idea that I am somehow saying my way of reading is much better and more sophisticated that their hypothetical way! ahahaha.)

(Go to bed, Rebecca.)

No, nonononono. Steph was specific: she wasn't venting, she was presenting something that was going to be read to a group of people, and as such, she wanted edits on all levels.

Besides, if you're callous then I'm worse, and I'm a big old softy-head.

And we both lurved the piece.

Steph, sweets, what are they in fact doing for your back? Do they know what's causing this? With only brother and older of two sisters both having suffered from severe disc compression, I get militant about doctors just telling sufferers to experiment with muscle relaxants or heating pads. Have they figured it out, and what are they going to do to fix it?