Stationary bike rides to dream locations

Tags

being yourself, control, express feelings, friends, friendship, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, listening, physical therapy, psychotherapy, self-neglect

The best part of my day today was stopping in to see the fellow who was my physical therapist all year and from whose care I have now graduated. He cocked his head and looked a little embarrassed, incredulous maybe, when I told him on Day One that I was seeing a psychotherapist to help me identify the ways I have of neglecting my foot, so effective were they, that they were the reason I needed surgery instead of just physical therapy. I suppose few people admit to deliberately seeking professional help to understand themselves, but I am too something to hide the truth of who I am anymore. In the long run he barely batted an eye. I’d had plenty of practice neglecting myself, I told him, and having it end with this yearlong stint of twice a week foot massages with him, although possibly sounding wonderful, was disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, we had a lot of fun over the course of the year because of all the joking around with everyone from tiny old ladies who’d hurt themselves falling down stairs to the tatooed policemen injured while actually fighting crime. Silliness is the norm there with plenty of jokes about the exercises he had me doing that looked like sobriety tests, and my stationary bike rides to dream locations. Who knows what he was actually thinking when I stopped in bearing cookies today, but the look on his face told me that even after a year of listening to all my foot confusion and lack of body awareness, allegedly the result of a childhood full of denial now being teased apart through psychotherapy, we’d become friends. Seems like addressing my emotional issues head on in front of this guy was worth the risk of revealing myself, because I felt what seemed like a genuine acceptance and appreciation of Jane that I truly wish I was cultivating more often.

Clearly my own good common sense is broken

Tags

being yourself, common sense, express feelings, pain, parents, physical therapy, stonewall, swelling, torn tendon

The longer I do physical therapy on my foot, post-surgery this time, the more I have to explain to people what happened, and therefore the more I hear myself tell the absurd story of self-neglect. If any of my kids had rolled their ankle on the stonewall out back, saw stars, had significant pain, and then swelling for 18 months (yikes!) I would certainly have taken them to the doctor. Not only did I not take myself to the doctor I thought it a fine idea to start dance lessons with my husband. Now, for that I have good reason in that he’d denied this great opportunity the first 27 years of our marriage, so why would I let a torn tendon I barely acknowledged stop me at last?

So, I need the physical therapist to remind me to take care of my healing foot and ankle today as I head into Philadelphia for a movie and dinner with a friend, because my own good sense is clearly broken. The obvious measures one would take to care for herself apparently do not function well in me, and so I ask my guy to remind me of when to slow it down.

Maybe we are all born with some basic common sense about protecting ourselves from further harm once we are injured, but I am pretty sure this normal process was forced out of me when I was young, by claims that my ailments would heal themselves, or go away, or not matter, or something else equally non-action oriented. But now I am a fully grown adult in charge of my own well-being, and I need answer only to myself. When all else fails I purchase my good common sense from professionals.