Two Sundays ago, while working out at the gym, what had started out as a small nag in my back and chest, slowly got worse. I was able to finish the chest part of my workout, but on my second exercise of doing back, my chest and back both started to hurt so much, I made the hard decision to just stop, and drive home. So now I was no longer able to run, do any kind of cardio, and now even lifting weights hurt. Basically, I could not exercise anymore. So I did the best thing I could do. When I went to the grocery store, I bought salad for the week for dinner. My normal diet of carbs and veggies had already lost its spot due to lifting weights and wanting more protein, but now I just needed food to subside and hopefully not put on any weight. So I basically made my dinner diet water in food form with a small pack of tuna and dressing for flavor.
Those first two days, my chest and back were so sore, and I spent a large amount of time self-massaging it and trying different things to get it loosened up. For my back, I was like a grizzly bear scratching its back on a tree. I would find the nice corner of a wall, and I would find the knot and just jam it into the trigger point, and this helped, but what it really needed was time.
Time. I hate time. It always seems to go fast when you want it to go slow and slow when you want it to go fast. When I first got hurt, it felt like the weeks were flying by, which was bad, because I needed it to go slow so I could heal, but little did I know, this was apparently a massive undertaking, and now that I am injured all over, and I just want time to go by fast, it has only been five days when I am writing this, and it feels like weeks. Although after five days of just teaching and going home and doing other important life things, I do feel a good deal better in my upper body, but sadly the improvements in my posterior tibial tendon are moving at a molasses pace, nothing ever seems to change it much, which does not make sense, but at this point I am resigned to whatever cruel fate it has in store for me.
A big part of the problem comes from the fact that I love routine, and over the course of the last few months, every sense of normalcy I had was slowly destroyed. I get to the point, where it feels like it is the end of the world if I do not do this thing, and then at the end of the day, this is simply not true. Life may seem slightly more boring without it, and some of the purpose of the day may seem to dwindle away, but once the initial shock is gone, the sense of normalcy returns. Obviously, I would want some things to stay normal more than other parts, but at this point, my body is in charge not my brain, and that is a hard part of life to deal with, especially at 27, when everything should be fine.
I am a little sad at how easy it has been to come home from work and just watch a movie and do some schoolwork, make my salad, and read then go to bed. I thought this was going to be a hard pill to swallow, but it has not bothered me that much. I thought it would be impossible to fall asleep after expending so little energy for the day, but it was not. I actually have been sleeping great. Newton’s second law of physics is so true. An object in motion stays in motion and an object at rest stays at rest. It is true of behaviors, not just objects. I just miss being in motion. I feel like I am slowly turning into another person. It is not a bad person or anything, but it is not quite the person I want to be. To say I am depressed is way too strong of a word, but I do feel like I have entered some sort of weird malaise I am just floating through life, and it just does not feel quite right. Maybe I just feel normal, and that is weird. I spend so much time not knowing what to do with my time and trying to figure out if the things I decide to do are worth it.
Life was a lot easier, when I could just work, run, eat, watch a movie, and do schoolwork. It was simple it was structured, and each task had a goal. Running was for exercise, and so that I could do what I enjoyed. Now I am very careful about what I eat during the week and even more importantly, the amount that I eat, and it is so lame and sad. There is nothing sadder than dumping a bag of lettuce into a bowl, dumping a pack of tuna into a bowl, and then shrugging and saying I guess this is it. There is so much more life has to offer, but I feel like I cannot accept the offer now.
Also watching a movie used to be my time to stretch and role and use my leg compression sleeves, but now that I do not run, the need is basically gone, and if I do it, it takes so much less time. It makes it easier to digest the movies, but it does not feel as right. I will now catch myself sitting there becoming aware of the fact that I am just sitting there doing nothing. I blame the movie Her for this, and not even the movie, more of a review I read of the movie. Where Phoenix was playing a video game and talking to his AI girlfriend, and someone’s review pointed out the fact that he was actually just alone talking to no one. Although I am not doing this, it makes me question a lot of my movie watching and podcast listening habits, but at this point, I do not know what else to do. Maybe when the weather gets nicer, I will just go sit on the shores of Green Lakes and do a different nothing. There is something that seems more rewarding about doing nothing in nature than at home.
This sounds a lot more doom and gloom than I intended it too. Considering how I felt back at the end of January/beginning of February, I am in a much better place. After five weeks of stressful student teaching, I got to work Winter break back at my normal school, and it was such a stress reliever. I did not realize how unhappy I had become student teaching and wearing the boot until my first day back at Elmcrest. I got to spend the day around people that I knew and love talking to, and then when I was at the gym, I realized that a weight that had been on my chest was removed.
Student teaching had been weighing me down so much, and after just one day of not doing it, I was relieved of so much stress. As I write this, I only have five more days of student teaching left, and after my break week, I have felt so much better at my placement. So five days is nothing, and I feel like I can start working out again, just not as hard, because the soreness is still not gone, but the real question is can physical therapy finally get me back to running? The boot is gone, but am I good enough? Did I need more time in it? I have never felt so scared about running. I feel like one day I am going to feel ready, and I am going to try, and it will be bad. I do not know if I am ready for that again, but after the first physical therapy session, it has started to feel better…
(This was written over a week ago, and now I can run 1 mile a day, and that has been going well! Big improvements!)
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