When I left the rehab hospital last summer, I went home in a turtle shell body brace and neck collar, and once again humping around on crutches. Prognosis was full recovery, but with a minimum of at least a year before I approached normal locomotion, and perhaps never reaching my previous level of athleticism (pedestrian as it may have been). I was so goddamn happy to be alive and out, though, that I couldn't bring myself to care too much about the temporary physical setbacks. I was content to stump around the house and yard getting incrementally stronger; content to simply revel in not being dead, or stuck with IVs, or strapped down and ventilated ... or so I thought.
One night I subsided into bed in my shell as usual, and after unstrapping and doing the careful back and forth to lever myself out of it, I quickly passed out. I dreamt, vividly, that I was on a long bike ride with Maury, Craig and some other folks. We were in the middle of riding home from a lakeside resort in Minnesota, and we had risen and left at dawn from our campsite in northern South Dakota. We stopped for breakfast at a McDonald's, of all places, and left our bicycles and gear at a wooden station constructed specifically for that purpose. Upon reaching the cash register, I realized I had left my wallet out with my gear. Amid the expected ribbing from my friends, I hurried out to get it. Time morphed in the way it does in dreams, and of a sudden I realized that Maury and Co. were back on their bikes (still laughing at Burbach, of course), and starting to ride away. Deciding in that instant to forgo breakfast, I started to jog towards my bicycle to catch up with them and then ... I was just running. Without effort or hindrance, I was running. Across the parking lot in the early sun, through the damp grass and out onto the highway, I ate up the miles. Craig and the team were long gone, my bicycle forgotten, and I was sprinting, flying, non-stop to everywhere and nowhere. I ran until what seemed like early afternoon, when I slowed to a halt alone at the end of a little wooden footbridge spanning a little creek in central South Dakota. Again, the dream shifted. In a curious juxtaposition of consciousness, I stood among the trees by the creek, and simultaneously inhabited the tired broken body I'd left lying on the narrow bed back in the really real world. My dream body was whole, strong and filled to bursting with energy and the liberty of flight, fidgeting to run farther and faster. Almost instantly, though, I was plunged into wakefulness, my leg and back throbbing, and the pillow wet from unconscious tears. In myself, I am scornful of the pointless weakness of self-pity; but for a few minutes that morning, I was awash in mourning for remembered health and function. Reminding myself, though, that much worse things have happened to much nicer guys than me, I ultimately shoved the self-pity into the dark corner where it belongs, levered myself back into my shell and crutched out to start the day.
Fast forward 15 months, and I'm running in the real world. Just on the treadmill at the gym, but journey of a thousand miles, blah, blah, blah. I started three weeks ago with .20 mile intervals, walking in between. I've since increased my running interval to.65 miles, alternating with sets of anaerobic exercise. The pain is considerable, but the last year has found me in a long-term, committed relationship with that particular sensation. We're the proverbial old married couple, she and I, and I go about my business with her comforting voice ceaselessly muttering and criticizing in the background.
The running I do in real life is a clumsy, plodding exercise in penance. It's nothing like the coruscating flight of my dream. Except that it is. Somewhere beneath the thudding, uneven steps, beneath the drudgery, discomfort and the smell of hot self, there is a small core of concentrated and joyous intensity, not so unlike that effortless sprint across the landscape of South Dakota. Maybe it's the years of wrestling practice, or the rehabs after twice tearing my ACL, or maybe it's the aforementioned intimacy I've developed with my pain receptors, but I absolutely find exhilaration in struggle.
Anyway, I'm off to the gym to run.
much peace,
tjb
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Monday, November 3, 2014
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