A Real Pain in the Neck

I was heavy with my second child when over 30 years ago, I lost my balance carrying clothes down to the laundry and fell hitting the back of my head on the steps.  I could use that as an excuse for my mental problems but instead offer it as a reason for the pain in my neck. I have had muscle relaxers, pains meds, chiropractic adjustments, cortisol shots, and massages over the years to help with the stiffness and subsequent shoulder problems. I carry every disappointment, sadness and loss in that injury. It has plagued me in divorces, deaths and through financial difficulties. Lately it has prevented me from looking back to the right to see what was coming. State Farm wishes I would. I have had three fender benders since finding myself in N. Georgia.  Last week I went to have massage in a house that had I not been told was a safe place, I would have been listening for banjo music and the smell of a meth factory.  The house is on a hill (what isn't?) on the road from Jasper, Georgia, to Talking Rock.  It has a sign outside that says "Massage School" -Student Rates $25/ hr. My little therapist was a sweet girl. She was hard at work on my shoulder when the door opened and a woman came in. Gray hair in a messy bun, a face that had never known makeup, badly in need of a good mask but which had loved the sun. She had mistaken me for someone else but within a minute she had diagnosed my ailment and told me "I'll fix it, Baby Girl". My neck and shoulder were turned and popped and "my atlas shrugged".  She wasn't threatening but instead she looked almost comical to me upside down and with gravity fully engaged. Her voice was rough and heavy with a Pickens County hillbilly dialect. After adjusting and popping and moving me in directions I hadn't moved in a while, she reached up to my right ear and gave it a little tug and I felt something release in my jaw. Then in a voice that sounded more like a kindly priest than a heavy set elderly lesbian who did massage therapy, she whispered "You need to let that go, Baby Girl, whatever it is, its just not worth holding on to".   Before leaving she suggested we go to the "Old Farts Dance" in Ellijay. She said she couldn't see to drive anymore at night and she'd love to bring a girl like me.  Finally I have a date.