Life

14 Stages Of Enduring Your Leg Falling Asleep

I am a good person. I pay taxes. I use crosswalks. I recycle regularly and I sometimes even share when I get a McFlurry. No, don't call me a hero; I am still only a mere citizen of this earth just like you, friend. I do what I should. I am a good person. But even the lowliest of us all, even the McFlurry hoarders and jaywalkers and people who don't like Harry Potter, do not deserve the indescribable, excruciating, unimaginable pain of discovering that your leg has fallen asleep.

I don't even know why our bodies have this function. It's like the "Share on Facebook" button you see on Tumblr – nobody in their right mind is using it, so why have it in the first place? Same goes for whatever alarm goes off in our bloodstream to make our limbs fall asleep and plague us with an agony unlike any we have ever known. As a person who is a very big fan of sitting in front of screens for a long period of time and sitting on myself in awkward positions, I feel personally attacked by biology for letting this happen, and I know I'm not the only one. If you are also a human being who has ever sat on a toilet for more than thirty seconds then you will empathize with the emotional rollercoaster of coping with this unspeakable condition:

Unsuspecting Naivety

You're sitting there, wherever you are, minding your own business. Watching Netflix. Playing a drinking game, er, studying. You have no idea what the next minute of your life is about to hold.

Inexplicable Uneasiness

The calm before the storm.

First Glimpse Of Panic

Something is not right. You reached out to grab a piece of cake or shifted slightly to accommodate a furry friend, and when your muscles moved it felt...just a little...strange.

High Alert

Okay, something is definitely wrong. You just experimentally moved your leg a little further, and it was the pins and needles equivalent of breaking the seal. Now that the weight on your leg has been moved your agony is inevitable. This was a ticking time bomb.

Denial

No, no, it couldn't be. I was barely even sitting on it. I AM A GOOD PERSON.

Shameless Bargaining

I'll only have two helpings of dessert. I'll stop rolling through right turns on red. I'll listen to NPR. I can be BETTER. Just please don't let this be happening to me.

Acceptance

It's happening. It'll be okay. It probably won't even be that bad. Right?...Right?!

Shaking It Off

Oh, you. Young, innocent, perpetually optimistic you. For some reason you thought that getting up and wiggling your now useless leg could save you. You were wrong.

Immediate, Profound Regret

No. You shouldn't have stood up. You shouldn't have even breathed. Why are you even attempting to be a human right now? What is a human? The pain of your leg slowly creeping back to life transcends all mortal human thoughts.

"Into The Crevasse"

This is clearly going to get better before it gets worse. As your leg slowly starts to regain feeling the pain only mounts, and just before you lose your grip on reality, you can hear Jack Donaghy's advice to Liz Lemon all those years ago: "Into the crevasse..."

The Absolute Peak Of Agony

This is it. This is what it means to be alive. Knowing that you'll be able to look back at a moment like this and say to your grandchildren, "I survived. I survived." Because by then science will have come up with a way to stop this from ever happening to another living thing again.

Going To Your "Happy Place"

If you watch Scandal (and if you don't, I kinda don't know how to relate to you anyway), I'll put it to you like this: Whenever someone beats the tar out of Jake, he goes into his happy place with Olivia Pope. So that’s what you do. Go to your happy place with Olivia Pope. This will be over soon.

Enduring The Last, Singular Ridiculously Painful Pins And Needles

The fewer there are the more they burn.

Unspeakable Relief

It's over. And you only cursed about sixteen times. You handled it like a champ. Sure, you're probably going to have PTSD that lasts about as long as it takes for you to make the same unforgivable mistake of sitting on your leg again, but right now, in these precious seconds after the nightmare is over, everything is finally right with the universe.

Images: NBC; Giphy (14)