Imbolc Valentine Moon
Been feeling like a creaky old man. The fall I took last Saturday produced a first class large bruise on my inner left elbow which I believe took, for a moment, all of my weight. The resulting motion wrenched my left arm away from my body, tearing or pulling something where muscles insert to my sternum. I mention this not to be gruesome, but to explain why I’ve been feeling creaky.
It matters. I don’t mind being an old man, not one bit. Older is what I am. What I am is ok. Except. My chest hurts, up high around the sternum. Each time I lift anything aversive conditioning sets in. The pain itself is not such a big deal, definitely manageable as pain. But the pain, and this is why I’m writing this, erodes my sense of myself as a healthy, fit old man. That makes me anxious. I wonder, what else is wrong?
This is not a conscious process. It took a couple of conversations with Kate to get it. The pain changes my self-image and that changed image chips away at my self-confidence. Yes, sure, in time I’d get used to this, if it were permanent. I’d compensate, as I imagine many of you have had to do at one point or another.
This post is about getting it out in plain sight, claiming what I’m doing and telling myself that, as Kate said, I’m injured and injuries heal. True that.
I already feel better psychically, just from realizing what I was doing as I reacted to the pain. Now I want to shed the anxiety and let it be.
Old man, yes. Injured old man, yes. Creaky old man? Not right now. Not yet.
