Time as a passenger in the car combined with an imminent birthday (now past in a flurry of cake, chocolates and gin) recently gave me a rare opportunity to think about things other than work, childcare or what else I need to get sorted before our eldest starts school, the youngest is settled at nursery and I’m back in the fray of life after maternity leave.
I’ve always figured there’s no point worrying about getting older: You’re as young right now as you’re ever going to be again so you may as well make the most of it, but recurrent 29 again birthdays have led to some deeper soul searching about the future (typical clichéd mid-life crisis stuff, I just haven’t bought the two-seater sports car…. yet!)
Ever helpful in this regard, the On This Day feature on Facebook popped up with the reminder that I was finally signed off from physio from my first ACL surgery seven years ago. Wow! Seven years. That’s roughly 20% of my lifetime attempting to fix the knee (never let it be said I’m not stubborn once I’ve set my mind on something), including four surgeries, countless physio sessions, PT appointments, fundraising fitness challenges and, now, blog entries.
All of which got me thinking: Is there a point where having a recurrent or long-term injury (which should be fixable but doesn’t seem to be too keen on the concept) ultimately becomes part of your identity
20% of a lifetime is quite a lot. 75% of a lifetime is even more and that’s how long I’ve had the dodgy knee – the evidence is there in my Year 7 photo where I can be easily identified as the very short one (it was my ambition to be 5 foot tall by the end of that year) with a knee bandage poking out below the regulation grey skirt (re-lives the old Twix advert: “Grey will never go out of fashion because grey has never been in fashion”
Maybe it explains why I feel like I’m living in Groundhog Day a lot of the time – doing the same physio (ACL and Diastasis Recti), trying to fix the same problems, to regain the same fitness again and again and again…
When something becomes that frequent a part of your day-to-day life, when does it ultimately start becoming ‘you’?
You welcome people asking how you’re getting on – it shows they care – but you also don’t want it to define you or be the only thing ‘of interest’ about you. You want to forget about it (maybe being constantly aware of it makes it worse than it actually is and, if you only stopped being conscious of it, it wouldn’t be an issue and would work exactly how you want it to?). Maybe ‘fighting it’ has become part of who you are? Maybe finding the solution takes away your purpose? Maybe fixing it and it not being an issue would leave a void that would need to be filled? And who would you be then? Where would you channel your energy instead?
When I started this blog, the aims were threefold: To provide information (where I have it), to share my experiences so others may learn or reassure themselves they’re not alone, and to have somewhere to vent myself. Like the vision for the Women’s Equality party (badly named, but that’s another blog) when it launched a few years ago, the ultimate goal is to not be needed.
I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this but I think it’s inevitable that ongoing health issues ultimately become part of who you are. In my case, the ACL injury is a feature of my past (school, gym and recent surgeries), my present (trying to regain fitness, play with my kids how I’d like to) and my future (it’s currently stopping me trying activities I’ve always wanted to, such as ski-ing and Strictly Worcestershire – a fundraising competition for the business community where local business people learn to dance, Strictly style).
In truth, the ACL issues, post-pregnancy rehab, economy and work sides of my life all feel a bit deja vu at the moment.
There’s a sense of ‘I’ve been here before’ but I still haven’t figured out how to break out of the cycle and ultimately reach the goals I have in mind.
Doing what I’m supposed to do doesn’t seem to work. The alternative routes I’ve tried so far also haven’t worked (not to the extent I’d like them to, anyway). It all reminds me of a ‘memorable’ trip to Nuneaton for work several years ago when, on leaving my destination, I got stuck on the ring road following the through traffic signs. Hang on a minute, this all looks familiar. I’ll go round again, I must have missed the sign I needed. Nope, I haven’t missed any signs and I’ve definitely been here before. Twice. I’ll take the next turn off the ring road and navigate a different route back from there. Only to find that the road I’d turned on to ultimately spat me right back out on, you guessed it, the ring road.
I think I ultimately got out of Nuneaton by following signs for a different town I didn’t need to go to but from where I could navigate a new route home.
Sometimes you have to go the long way round.
Maybe this will be the same. In fact, there’s no maybe, is there? It already is the long way round. It will be good to leave the ACL identity in the past. But first, I need to get to where I want to be.