I've always had an active fantasy life. (Not like that... well, yes, like that, too. But anyway.) In my head I've always been an athlete, a tall, competent, coordinated athlete who can dodge a bullet or take down a mugger with one punch or perform heroic leaps to catch falling babies. In reality, I'm a stocky, uncoordinated, awkward desk jockey with years of experience playing sports badly and staying out of trouble. But there was always the thought that if I won the lottery, took myself off to some mysterious island, and trained diligently for a couple of years, I could become the ass-kicking Amazon of my fantasies.
The hardest part of dealing with my joint issues is coming to terms with the fact that that is no longer true.
It's not a loss of something tangible. I'm not even all that upset about some of the nastier possible consequences of this incurable, degenerative condition. It's more like the "loss of hope" described here - I have a surprising amount of emotional energy invested in my athletic potential. Untangling that is taking a lot of time, and I find myself resisting it very strongly - it's much easier to just forge ahead and take my pills and go to my PT appointments and not think about it too hard. I don't know if that's healthy or not. It seems like something is sort of broken with my self-image, and I should probably figure out what's wrong so I can fix it, but I'm having trouble sitting still long enough.
Speaking of which, I'm going to continue musing in later posts.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment