Being Used to Pain

As soon as I woke up this morning, while still laying in bed, I could feel that my body was more healed than yesterday without even moving. So I twisted to one side and the next, arched up my back and then swung a leg over the edge of the bed. Still better than yesterday! Then I noticed that my gut wasn't feeling all jumbled up as it has for the past few weeks, which I've attributed to the muscular issues remaining from my back injury in November.

I got up and sauntered around like a cowboy with a swagger. I made coffee and then went to sit in front of the computer. Still feeling better.

Just last week, I said to my massage therapist that I thought I had about 2 more weeks until I'd be all healed up. One more week to go! This is the best my body has felt (in totality; I've been in a good mental place for well over a month now) since early November. Of course, some of my pain has been due to self-inflicted punishment--like my crazy birthday workout, effectively doing a HIM at IMFL and then another one just 2 weeks ago--but underneath has been the mess that I've been from my "accident" on 11/15.

While I've been able to move myself towards a healed state, it's been a slow process. This morning while testing myself out (I'd say I'm about 98% now), it occurred to me that I have become so accustomed to this discomfort, this pain. I'm not even sure what my pain threshold really is. If you asked me to rate how it's been on a scale from 1-10, I'd call it a 3--just something that's there that bugs the shit out of me. But maybe to someone else my pain would register more like an 8. All I know is that I've been able to continue swimming, biking, running, lifting and many other activities without too much restriction. But I've noticed a lack of full range of motion, and I am very flexible and normally my range of motion is well beyond any standards. Yet I'd become OK with limiting myself and being OK with things like not being able to raise a foot to my waist or higher (can't everyone do that?), bend over backwards just because I can--things like that.

And if you restrict yourself like that, eventually it becomes the norm. Even though I've continued pushing my own envelope, I've felt like I might do something at any time that would send me spiraling backwards in improvement. I can think of other times in my life where I've been OK with pain--psychic or physical--and have been just too complacent to try and move forward. Sometimes pain is a sign that we need to push our envelopes more to get through it or know it better so that we can move beyond it.

I'm very happy that as fucked up as I thought my back was that I knew it could have been much worse. It was entertaining to listen to others opine on how long it should take me to recover from what happened, but how could they know how bad it was unless they were there? I knew how bad it was when I was laying on the floor after about 80 pounds of wood had crashed down on my shins and quads after my glutes had already hit concrete and all my back muscles had gone into a protective tightening mode. I knew how bad it was a few minutes later when I was laying on an ice pack and my back muscles were spasming, I was sweating bullets, my pulse was going through the roof, and my body was trying to throw me into shock. I knew how bad it was a week and a half later when I went for my first post-injury run and my shins, quads, glutes and back were screaming at me to the point that I was crying while running--the tears streaming down my face and me wondering if it was a bad idea to try running at all.

So I laughed when one person said I should have recovered from this in 2 weeks! My massage therapist thought I'd be recovered sooner than now, too, but I told him you had to be there to know just how bad it was.

I am grateful that I have conditioned myself, sometimes in extreme ways, so that I was able to withstand the injury, and I'm coming back. I am done being OK with the pain and discomfort. I am done restricting myself. I am done saying I can't do certain things because it might cause me additional pain.

There was a time in my life when I would be OK being immersed in psychic or physical pain for months at a time. During the last 3 years, it's interesting that despite all the crap that has happened to me, my tolerance has shortened to about 8 weeks. 8 weeks is about all the time I will let myself be subject to crap--whether it be how someone else is treating me, how I am treating myself or going easy on myself because I perceive myself to be injured. I could enumerate all the examples of this and bore you, but I know how it's been.

I observe others and how they have built up this tolerance for pain to the point of staying in unhealthy situations for months or even years. What if everyone just decided to put limits on how long they would let themselves be in them? Part of the game is just making a conscious choice and setting a goal, and saying, "x weeks from now I am going to be in a much better place because I choose to take action NOW."

And now I can't wait to be 100%. My 100% is at least 150% of most normal people, I suppose, but I like it that way. Maybe now I should lower my tolerance to only 4 weeks!