Go Ahead, Jump
"All you're gonna do is jump up on this little step." "Okay, no problem"
"Whenever you're ready, go ahead."
"Okay."
As I stood an inch away from the step, loaded in the jumping position, I couldn't help but think of all the things that could go wrong. What if I don't land right? What if I tear it again? What if I tear the other one?
I told myself to stop worrying so much and just jump. I yelled at myself in my head to just jump. I finally pleaded with myself, please just jump, just this once.
My feet stayed on the ground as if they were superglued to it.
It wasn't going to happen today.
"It's okay, I'm not too worried about it, let's do something else."
"But you know I'm going to think about this all weekend."
"It's okay, really."
I wasn't okay with it then and I'm still not. It has consumed me all weekend. Why couldn't I jump up on that small step? My mind was saying yes. It gave my body all the appropriate signals that it was okay. But my feet wouldn't budge.
They say it takes years to build up trust but only seconds to ruin it. Up until April of 2014, my body had done as it was supposed to. Thirty years of building up trust, and one second to destroy it. So now when my brain tells my feet to jump they're like "yeah well we don't know how knee is going to react, so we're opting out." Like knee is this awful thing. But it's not even knees fault really. It's a combination of hamstring and quad and calf and everyone who didn't do their job that day. It's everyone. So now, we have a whole bunch of body parts that aren't as loyal as I thought and my brain has to convince everyone to figure their shit out again.
But how?
As I'm writing this I think there has to be a simple solution but there isn't. I can listen to Van Halen's "Jump" all I want, it's probably not the difference maker. I can visualize myself jumping up on that thing, but that only gets me so far. I have to TRUST again. Even if that means I'm going to get hurt again.
Even if my body were to sit me down and say I'm never going to do that again, it still wouldn't be enough. I need visual proof. But to get visual proof I need to get through the first road block. I need to convince myself it is going to be okay.
This tasks seems harder than trying to convince my grandmother that texting is IN ADDITION to talking on the phone, not INSTEAD OF. She refuses. It's impossible.
Aside from the jumping, the building of the muscles is a long process. I'm slowly coming back to my old self, or should I say, my new self. As the muscles grow and I start to see definition again, my mind starts to remember the immense confidence it once walked with. When you limp around slowly for months, you start to lose your swagger a bit. (Unless you have a pimp limp). I've been insecure and scared when I walk. A wrong step and who knows what will happen.
Once while I was walking in New York City a woman ran right into me and I staggered to find my balance. It took a second and I was back on my feet and realized that I was just fine. It was almost good to get hit. Not that I welcome that - don't get any ideas people- but it made me realize I could be resilient. The difference between that incident and jumping is I had no control over it. With the jumping, I'm the only one in control.
I asked my PT Randy what would happen if say I had to run, like I had to run away from someone. He said I would be able to run, just wouldn't be able to cut or anything, and might be in some pain. But I could run if I had to.
So what if I had to jump? What if there was a spider? haha. A really, really big spider the size of a mouse. Or maybe a fire. I don't know. I think of all these weird things. But the woman bumping into me and the jump, or lack thereof a jump, made me think about necessity. Doing something because we have to do it. At some point someone will say if I don't jump I can't run and if I don't run I can't play soccer and maybe that's what it will take. Until then, I'm at the roadblock. Waiting for someone to pick it up knowing that no one will.
If only I could just... jump over it. Man, that would make things easier.