Pain and accomplishment
Jun. 9th, 2004 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alonewiththemoonAbout 14 years ago, pretty much to the day, I took a job working for the US Forest Service in Alaska, doing survey archaeology in the Tongass National Forest. I liked being outdoors and stuff, but I wasn't what you would call an outdoorsy type. I took the job because I was graduating and didn't know what else to do with myself, and for various emotional reasons going Very Far Away seemed like a good idea. So city girl set off with her brand new REI and LL Bean gear to the Alaskan wilderness.
And on day one, city girl wrenched her knee very, very badly. I climbed up one side of a fallen piece of old-growth and expected the ground to be in the same place on the other side, even though I couldn't actually see the ground through a thick tangle of blueberry bushes. As I half-slid down the tree trunk, I realized my mistake. I figured the blueberry bushes would break my fall, which they did. The problem was that my left foot got snagged on the trunk as I slid and so my knee was pulled up around my shoulder somewhere. City girl was not about to be helicoptered out of the field on her first day on the job, and besides, I had no health insurance so what else could I do but grit my teeth, pick myself up and keep on surveying my transect. Damn knee hurt the rest of the summer, but it was more than worth it for the things I learned and experienced.
Years went by and mostly my knee didn't bother me. Then I started bellydancing, and it would twinge occasionally. Recently I've started doing some intensive posturework (Alexander Technique), and hoo boy, it's 14 years ago all over again. I think that as I'm fixing various postural issues that have been life-long problems for me, my knee is having to re-heal itself as I put stresses on it from different directions and angles. I'm not sure if I expressed that well, but it feels like breaking a crooked bone in order to reset it.
On the one hand, this is very discouraging. I'm asking a lot of my body, my not-getting-any-younger body, as I go further along in my dancing, and every new pain makes me question what makes me think I can do any of this in the first place. I should have started younger; I'll never get my body into good enough shape; I'm just a flawed vessel.
But on the other hand, I think: I am complaining about the knee that I hurt while walking the old growth woods of Alaska, self-sufficient, flying in helicopters and float planes, carrying guns for bears, talking to seals, watching the aurora borealis, making archaeological finds in order to assist native land claims, and that I have now re-injured while bellydancing, finding movement in complex music though muscular control and grace, isolation and grand gesture. Damn, I think, is that my life? That was/is me that's done all that?
For a moment, I can feel the pain in my knee as something to appreciate, a payment of my body for the choices I have made. Still hurts like someone's trying to pry off my patella with a hot poker, but I can use that hurt as a symbol of the things I can do instead of a reminder of the things I can't.
And on day one, city girl wrenched her knee very, very badly. I climbed up one side of a fallen piece of old-growth and expected the ground to be in the same place on the other side, even though I couldn't actually see the ground through a thick tangle of blueberry bushes. As I half-slid down the tree trunk, I realized my mistake. I figured the blueberry bushes would break my fall, which they did. The problem was that my left foot got snagged on the trunk as I slid and so my knee was pulled up around my shoulder somewhere. City girl was not about to be helicoptered out of the field on her first day on the job, and besides, I had no health insurance so what else could I do but grit my teeth, pick myself up and keep on surveying my transect. Damn knee hurt the rest of the summer, but it was more than worth it for the things I learned and experienced.
Years went by and mostly my knee didn't bother me. Then I started bellydancing, and it would twinge occasionally. Recently I've started doing some intensive posturework (Alexander Technique), and hoo boy, it's 14 years ago all over again. I think that as I'm fixing various postural issues that have been life-long problems for me, my knee is having to re-heal itself as I put stresses on it from different directions and angles. I'm not sure if I expressed that well, but it feels like breaking a crooked bone in order to reset it.
On the one hand, this is very discouraging. I'm asking a lot of my body, my not-getting-any-younger body, as I go further along in my dancing, and every new pain makes me question what makes me think I can do any of this in the first place. I should have started younger; I'll never get my body into good enough shape; I'm just a flawed vessel.
But on the other hand, I think: I am complaining about the knee that I hurt while walking the old growth woods of Alaska, self-sufficient, flying in helicopters and float planes, carrying guns for bears, talking to seals, watching the aurora borealis, making archaeological finds in order to assist native land claims, and that I have now re-injured while bellydancing, finding movement in complex music though muscular control and grace, isolation and grand gesture. Damn, I think, is that my life? That was/is me that's done all that?
For a moment, I can feel the pain in my knee as something to appreciate, a payment of my body for the choices I have made. Still hurts like someone's trying to pry off my patella with a hot poker, but I can use that hurt as a symbol of the things I can do instead of a reminder of the things I can't.
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-09 12:33 pm (UTC)"For a moment, I can feel the pain in my knee as something to appreciate, a payment of my body for the choices I have made. Still hurts like someone's trying to pry off my patella with a hot poker, but I can use that hurt as a symbol of the things I can do instead of a reminder of the things I can't."
of course, you now have insurance and could get the thing looked at. :)