And thank the gods for painkillers
I hurt my back this week. A recurring back problem, which stuns any movement and blocks my ability to do anything – at all. I can hardly roll out of bed, and even the slightest bend in the lower back sends a sharp, blinding ping of pain through my entire posterior chain, leaving me incapacitated in a manner I’ve never experienced before. And to top it off, it’s my birthday. Turning 41 comes fast and with a vengeance, it would seem.
This of course means that everything is cancelled. Every workout, every beach volleyball practice, every appointment with every friend. All I do is lie in bed, bingeing old seasons of The Bear or trying to find comfort in the repetitive courses in Gran Turismo on my PlayStation.
My disaster alert has quickly escalated and catastrophizing is kicking in hard, every kind imaginable: How my body will deteriorate and I will lose all my strength. How I will be left behind in beach volleyball and be doomed to never improve at the rate of my teammates. How my body has weakened in recent years, and the sneaking suspicion this could be what everybody meant when they talked about growing older. I’ve basically been hit with a very strong, concentrated dose of midlife crisis – a wonderfully potent mix of vanity, loneliness and fear, showcasing my worst sides, weakest spots and most pervasive struggles.
This is what happens when you remove my system. This design of mine, all my routines, habits and patterns, they aren’t sprinkles on top of an already well-functioning system. They are the system, and if you kick just one of the legs away, let alone all of them, the whole thing collapses, leaving me only days before my fragile mind starts spiraling fast out of control. I am proud of what I’ve managed to build to maintain and run this life of mine, but I despise the brittleness, the frailty of it, and how little it takes to throw me off course.
People find my routines and habits too rigid and inflexible. It can be frustrating dealing with me. I don’t blame them. But it’s in service of a better life for me, a mind that stays the course and sticks the landing. This is all I have and as such, it will have to suffice.