One Year On

As you read this post I'm back in London, having a few nice days to celebrate my boyfriend's birthday, which is exactly what we were doing this time last year when I first got the horrible pain that set this whole chain of events off. 

I have come full circle. 

I've been feeling fairly reflective lately, thinking about what I've lost and gained. About what's changed. About what hasn't. I'm still working, but I do less than half the hours I used to. I still enjoy my job, though it's very different and mostly a lot less stressful. I've lost time spent with my friends and I've lost the events, the plays, the dinners, the cinema trips and the satisfied feeling I had from doing all these things I enjoy so regularly. I've lost some independence. 

But I've also gained time with my boyfriend. When I lived in London we saw each other one weekend a month. Sometimes 2 weekends a month. Now we see each other most of the week; he practically lives at my house and I still haven't gotten over the novelty of seeing him so much. 

And I've gained space. Space to take a breath. Space to take a step out of my life and live a different one for a while. Tread a slightly different path. Space to recover, to build my body back up and to eat better and to try and take care of myself properly for the first time in a long time. 

And that's the biggest thing I've gained. The desire to care about myself. My body used to be a thing I dragged myself around in. A bit defective, mostly hated, made fun of. Now I'm trying to nurture it, to listen to it. To fix it up a bit. New wheels. Nice paint job. Spring clean. I (sort of) eat better, I (try to) sleep better. I exercise. I even look after my hair and skin better. I wear those insoles in sensible, supportive shoes.

Progress feels slow. I thought I'd be doing better than I am, but I am better than I was. I'm more tired than ever and my muscles ache but the uncomfortable joint pains are lessening. The feeling that my knees are hollow and will collapse any second, the sharp knife-like pains in the fronts of my hips, those pains happen less. The scary pains. The ones that make me wonder what's wrong, whether I'm injuring myself, whether I should stop or keep going or maybe just lie down for a month. 

But everytime I look at my calf muscles, which are getting strong and developed from swimming, I feel a sense of achievement. I can do this. I am doing this. I remember the first time I went swimming and barely did 10 lengths, and subluxed my shoulder,  and was shaky and sick and stiff for 3 days afterwards, and I think about how I can now swim 1 kilometre like it's nothing and I can see the progress I'm making. I think back to the first time I did the Shoulder Bridge exercise and my thighs shook with the sheer effort of holding themselves up, and how I can now do 20 of them without that happening and how I can lift a leg off the floor each time and I can see the progress I'm making.

This is going to take longer than the year my Rheumatologist predicted last September. And maybe I won't ever get back to where I was, fully. But I'm learning to be okay with that. As long as I know I'm doing everything I can, I will accept whatever the end result is, and whatever that means for my life.

I will get strong, I will feel better. I will end up with abs like Jessica Ennis-Hill.