Melvin & Me, Part 37: Trusting the Body

I have said before and I'll say again that I have many reasons to not trust my body.  It's a very particular grief, processing that kind of betrayal--most people are unaware that it's even an option until it happens.  There is a difference between wanting your body to do something it cannot do and being betrayed by one's body.  I identify with a lot of my older patients discussing this problem, particularly the patients that were faced with needs significant enough to require nursing home placement (temporary or permanent).  There are many things that they feel their body should be capable of doing--simple things--that are still somehow not possible.  Arthritic hands that cannot open a bottle; knees giving out crossing the living room; waking up to find that it already too late to make it to the bathroom; all of these force a cumulative change in how an individual can look at themselves and there is some inherent grief to it.  

I carry a lot of that conditioning still.  I had multiple years of it.  I have many good reasons to not trust my body.  I adjusted to those expectations.  I have to remind myself that the conditioning and habits I needed to survive are not necessarily the skills I will always need.  I mentioned offhandedly at work the other day that it was a matter of time before I was hospitalized again--with any luck, not for many years--and watched as they thought about how to react to that.  It's a bald truth, but a truth nonetheless.  I've had a chronic illness for twenty-three years at this point; I know a few things deep in my bones because they have been etched in.  

Ten years later, ten years from the pinnacle event, I am starting to get to a point where I can take some things for granted again.  And it is an odd thing.  There is a permanent hole in my abdominal wall, and yet there are still some things that I can take for granted.  I am trying to unlearn.  

The first time I worked three twelve-hour shifts in a row, I was low-key terrified.  I was prepared to break in some ways, to need a full X days to recover.  I did need some recovery, but not the kind of lingering recovery that I used to need, where borrowing against tomorrow's energy required literal weeks of recovery.  There are a number of ways that I am in the best shape of my life.  

So lately, I've been trying indoor rock climbing.  I have never done a pull-up in my life; I have zero reason to think I could be good at this.  However, not all elements of rock climbing are brute force--there are places to finesse and trust your toes more than we would think is normal.  It does not have to look like a ladder to be something that has enough elements to ascend thirty, forty, fifty feet up a wall.  

Raring to go!

Raring to...

Erm...
Ah, beans.

And this is why it has been so freeing.  I don't know what my body can or cannot do in this situation, so I have to let it show me.  I have the delight of being able to surprise myself while simultaneously not feeling defeated when I tumble off:  it's a learning space.  It's a new adventure.  I am genuinely frightened up in the air.  It's a new space to explore trusting my body without preconceived notions.  As such, it is allowing me to find spaces to better listen to my body again.  I am learning how to push without overstretching.  I am learning how to be mindful in hearing what my body needs in this environment and that then reminds me that it is okay to ask in other spaces.  Because I am pausing to listen again.  Because I am finding safe ways to ask and engage.  

To ask, to listen, and to honor the answer.  To transpose that experience into other places where I similarly need to check in with my body.  To honor the gut as a source of insight rather than an albatross; at best I would see my gut feelings as good advice from an untrustworthy source.