The Fall of a Weekend Warrior: A Journey into Forced Zen via a Pair of Batman Underwear
I never paid much attention to those ominous “old guys at the Y” tales.
You know the stories: middle-aged ballers pulling up for a jumper and instantly dropping to the parquet like Woody in Toy Story when Andy walks in the room. Then they spend the next six months in physical therapy stretching resistance bands — as well as the truth — with an embellished recounting of how they still managed to drain the shot.
Like any aging former athlete worth her salt, I refused to admit that could ever happen to me. That someday I would actually have to <gasp> STRETCH prior to engaging in any intuitive acts of sportsdom, because my body would never betray me (despite clear evidence to the contrary confronting me in the mirror each morning).
So I guess it was far from shocking when I injured myself in a spectacularly nonspectacular way after years of condescension towards “warming-up” left my once indestructible lower extremities highly vulnerable.
Okay, fine, lesson learned. Surgery. A few weeks of physical therapy. Newfound respect for stretching. Resumption of all activities. Full recovery. End of story.
Or not.
It was merely a stroll down the hall. Granted the “stroll” was on crutches, only two weeks after surgery, and without the protection of my removable boot — emphasis on the strictly titular adjective “removable” because “removing it” should never have been an real option. A stroll in which my crutches, cruising along at an ill-advised pace, encountered a sinister pair of Batman ‘fun’derware lurking in the shadows on the floor. Fucking skid-marked Batman underwear. The caped crusading garment was meant to evoke fun and excitement from an eternally potty training 4-year-old, not cause a catastrophic injury.
Then came a hideous “popping” sound that no life form should emit, a desperate search for the machete-wielding villain who slashed my Achilles while The Batman was literally lying down on the job, a house full of firemen (did they really have to send a goddamned ladder truck when we called 911?), and a circulatory system full of enough narcotics to make Courtney Love blush.
An innocent pair of 4Ts cost me four months of my life and forced a once-proud weekend warrior into retirement in the most pathetic “Jerry-Rice-sporting-cornrows-in-a-Seahawks-jersey” kind of way.
Some people don’t experience any pain with an Achilles tear. I was not one of those people. To say it hurt is like saying Antonio Cromartie is fertile.
It hurt to a science-defying intensity. Although I’ve not put up Antonio-like stats, I have reproduced, and thus can assert that the pain of bringing babies into the world — even my bulldog-headed offspring — paled in comparison to rupturing my Achilles. And despite the caveat that I didn’t experience much pain during childbirth because of the epidural I demanded immediately (like right around Month Seven of pregnancy), I’m pretty sure removing all of my skin with a cucumber peeler and then jumping into a pool of rubbing alcohol would be less painful than what I felt that night.
I thought I’d feel pain until the end of time. That there would be no way to control it short of shooting me in the jugular with a rhino-strength tranq gun.
As excruciating as the pain was, however, it was also perspective-shattering. It was the kind of pain that I can recall spontaneously and viscerally even now, four months later. And when I do, it inspires a profound sense of gratitude — that my pain is not chronic — and empathy for my friends for whom it is.
That’s not to say that I never felt sorry for myself. Even with a bad wheel, I managed to run a spectacular marathon…of self-pity, with no discernible finish line. But at some point I realized that feeling sorry for oneself gets a bad rap. We instinctively empathize when others are in pain, yet are ashamed when we feel sorrow for ourselves, despite the fact that it’s a necessary and valuable first step toward healing.
Empathy, whether directed inwardly or outwardly is cathartic. Forget chicken soup, nothing is better for the soul than collapsing in the corner of the shower, sobbing, self-rocking, and sucking one’s thumb (as long as no one around you is Googling “nearest inpatient psych ward”).
I felt sorry for myself because I had to undergo another surgery, a five-hour ordeal described by the normally cocksure orthopedic surgeon as “a fucking disaster.” I felt sorry for myself because I was sentenced to wear a cast for almost three months <side note: I could’ve scored the surgical hat trick if my husband had allowed me access to a hacksaw one panic-filled evening. Cast-claustrophobia is a real thing, my friends> I felt sorry for myself (and those around me) because I couldn’t bathe adequately, I couldn’t drive (which is 97.3% of being a mom), and I couldn’t chase my kids around (in both jest and pursuit, trying to contain the four-year-old once he discovered he could add to his arsenal of punishment avoidance by yelling “I quit this family” while running out the front door).
I felt sorry for myself because simply going to the bathroom required a strategic plan that rivaled the Normandy invasion. I felt sorry for myself when I finally stepped on the scale after months of immobility during which I made the healthy decision to parlay my bedridden state into a strict carb-only diet plan. I felt sorry for myself when my children mocked me for crawling on all fours up and down the stairs, routinely suffering the indignity of being trampled by our obese cat. I felt sorry for myself when I was finally able to start physical therapy and I discovered that my ankle now had the flexibility of a politically-inspired Facebook post.
Yep, I took feeling sorry for myself to epic levels, only to pile on shame and guilt when I let reasonable perspective return, and with it the weight of considering potentially far more unfortunate fates. But it required embracing that sadness, that humiliation, that tediously relentless vigilance and patience I needed to complete the simplest of tasks, to not only emotionally survive the ordeal, but to be transformed by it.
It took destroying my literal Achilles heel for me to destroy my figurative one.
I have never done well with feeling helpless or idle. Not that anyone relishes those states, but independence and productivity have been so inextricably intertwined with my sense of self-worth that undergoing surgery without anesthesia would’ve been more comfortable than having to ask others for help for four…straight…months.
From housework to childcare, from needing someone to listen to me vent to literally getting out of bed, I was completely dependent on other people. And that dependency, that helplessness, that feeling of non-productiveness, were far more unbearable than any physical pain I had felt to date. It dawned on me how much I had inadvertently fabricated stress and activity throughout my life, just to feel useful.
Trying to fight legitimate helplessness is a bit like trying to eat a soup sandwich. Mercifully, the futility of resisting hit me hard. This injury left me little choice but to recognize and be grateful for the minutiae of life because I was no longer physically capable of burying it with distraction. I was forced into a state of mindfulness, a perspective that suddenly found value in simplicity and presence. And being fully present in the present. Forced Zen, if you will. I not only accepted simplicity, I began to revel in it.
I vowed to never take showering for granted again (much to the relief of my cohabitants). I vowed to never take just being able to walk for granted again. And there is no “just” about that. Walking is a gift. One that some of my dearest friends no longer have. I vowed to appreciate the freedom that came with having to hang out at the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid for awhile.
I simply didn’t have the bandwidth to worry about absurdities over which I had no control, like blurry Christmas cards or sporting events (just kidding, I haven’t evolved that much), because my resources were maxed out trying to choreograph the safest and most efficient way to push a laundry basket three feet down the hall, on one foot. And by efficient I mean in less than 45 minutes.
As my boy Thich Nhát Hanh would tell us, once we remove manufactured nonsense from our lives, we are able to see what and who really matter. Peace, contentment, and freedom can only exist in the present, and the really cool part is that those things are always there. We just have to be disciplined enough to focus on them and brave enough to embrace them.
And so take it from me, your fallen weekend warrior: the path toward enlightenment is an uncluttered one, my friends — a hallway devoid of superhero underwear.
