Age is just a number
I don’t mind getting older. Really I don’t. Mostly because I feel that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been able to put behind me a lot of superficial worries and not get caught (as caught up?) in the things that don’t matter, to be able to focus on the things that do – love, happiness, friends, family, compassion, caring.
There is one thing about growing older that doesn’t sit well with me – my aging body. I’m not talking about the appearance of wrinkles or how my body has physically changed over the years. I’m talking about how my body has changed in its ability to perform, recover and heal.
In short, I feel like my body is falling apart.
My husband always teases me that things start to fall apart after age 35. (He’s a few years older than I am.) But I refused to believe him because, after all, age is just a number, right?
But a few years on the other side of 35 has me wondering whether or not he’s right.
I’ve always been somewhat injury-prone. I mean, who dislocates their shoulder while swimming? Yeah, I still haven’t figured that one out yet either.
However, over the past two to three years, I feel like I am constantly injured with a few pockets here and there of being healthy. From knee surgery to posterior tibial tendonitis to plantar fasciitis to this nagging hip pain, it’s one thing after the other.
It’s frustrating when you feel like you follow all the directions (most of the time) and yet your body still doesn’t cooperate. It’s frustrating when it seems like there’s a huge communication gap between your brain/heart and your body. It’s hard when all you want to do is move, especially when movement has become an integral part of how your exist in this world.
I’m not the fastest or best runner or the most advanced yogi or anything more than a wannabe surfer. I can’t lay my identity on those titles but movement? And the freedom that movement brings to me? I can’t live without that.
For me, movement is meditation – it gets me out of my own head and a bit closer to who I am underneath all the layers and expectations. Movement makes me feel like me.
Not being able to move in the way that I want and that I’m used to makes me feel like I’m caged in. I’ve felt my mood drop many degrees over the past few weeks since the NYC Half Marathon.
I’m not ready to give up anything yet and I do believe that I will be running, practicing yoga and surfing until I’m much much older. But I would like my body to cooperate…just a little bit more.
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