My dear Reader.

I want to tell you about this place. It exists as a metropolitan in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by endless hills and country. It is covered in mists and framed by humid stone and brick. You can easily see how legends and myths were born there. I was somewhere in Great Britain, and the scenery was more impressive than I ever thought it would be.

On one such misty morning, I awoke and reached for a pillow above me. Unfortunately, the weight I put on my extended arm pushed the shoulder out of its joint. The shock of the pain! It disturbs me even now to think of it. The helplessness and immobility was enough to induce panic; a feeling which was thankfully fleeting because this has happened before.

The only solution was to raise myself in a sitting position and pivot my upper body so gravity could help slide it back into place. Even as I write, the tension creeps back in with the memory, and I need to swing the arm to reassure myself where it is in the socket.

I traveled back home, but as the days progressed, a deep soreness set in, and all the attached tissues were aching and the joint unsteady. Moving the elbow (above or past the latitude of my breast) felt risky, and there was no pharmacy that sold shoulder or back braces.

On top of that, my trip back to Sweden was in motion. There I was, laden with months of clothing, toiletries and books from a long stay in Denmark. There were so many books: books for the children, books for me, books in French, English and Danish. I decided to leave the Danish and pick them up on a return trip.

(oh, but that bookstore!)

My point is that all this diverse material added up in weight. To be able to lug everything by train across two countries, I had to move a lot of it into my backpack. The strap shifted against the scapula, threatening to nudge the ball-and-socket a wee bit out of its cradle. I navigated through Copenhagen, engaged in conversation with an angry drunk, babysat a stranger’s baby, and made it to Stockholm just in time to catch the Arctic train to Narvik, Norway; all the while wondering if perhaps I had broken something in my shoulder, with the pain being so miserable and constant.

It is better now; just a dull ache. What has become more noticeable is this hyper-mobility seems to be affecting more joints. My knees feel loose when I sit down and cross my legs. My hip, if flexed in a particular direction, does not know if it wants to stay attached. Will I be walking down the street and suddenly fall apart, like a car losing its axles — my wheels lying slumped, next to my lumpy body?