Unbroken
"You broke your cuboid bone". I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Back track a month ago, I severely sprained my left foot when I got up out of bed in the middle of the night. I don't even remember getting up- just the excruciating pain running up and down my foot. I went to urgent care a couple days later, and the X-rays showed it was not broken. They gave me crutches and said I would be fine in a week.
A week goes by and then two. I made attempts to walk on it but it still hurt. I would go to work in crutches during the day and soak my feet in salt water at night. I saw my primary doctor who ordered an MRI and sent me to a podiatrist. Since MRI's take 25 years to get done (my sad attempt at exaggeration)- the podiatrist recommended that I start walking on it with a brace. So being the obedient patient, I did try and failed miserably.
The following week he calls me to say the MRI results came back and I had indeed broken that little bone on the bottom of my foot- the cuboid bone. He ordered me to immediately get off my foot, come in on Monday get my foot casted (can that be a verb?), and stay home for 6 weeks. I burst into instant tears over the phone. He took some breaths and let me babble and then reminded me to come in on Monday.
Did this man not know all the commitments on my calendar? Stay home for 6 weeks? I could not process his words. And I couldn't understand why I was crying to be honest. Everyone was giving their recommendations based on the X-ray which showed it was not broken. The MRI did take a while to get approved and be scheduled. I did everything I was supposed to do-but it was not enough.
Thankfully, I do practice meditation. So while it took me a bit to calm my mind after the news, I came to a few realizations. My tears came because I had been forcing my foot to do something it was protesting. I was going based on X-rays and their medical opinions and not taking into consideration how I actually felt- which was ongoing pain whenever I tried to walk.
I was not really listening to my body. And when I realized that- I felt sadness because I believed that I had let myself down. I was focused on the goal- get back to normal- work, work, work- that I totally missed all the cues that something was severely wrong. I felt like a broken person, instead of a person with a broken bone.
How do I balance being a go getter and my natural desire to live life to the fullest but also stop and slow down when I get the cues from my body ? That is the question that I had been faced with.
It's been a week since I got casted (yes I proclaim it to be a verb now :-). I am no longer fighting the need to rest and slow down- I don't have a choice since I can't walk. I was also forced to face some stories I have carried since childhood. I judged inactivity as laziness and equated my worth and value with what I did and produced in the world. I also saw that while I love self- care- it was a good thing to practice only when it had been convenient to do so. All pointing to my need to control outcomes in some way and push myself to produce all the while ignoring pain signals.
But guess what--rarely do I get to be the general manager of the universe- well let's be serious - how about never. I don't have as much control as I like to think. But I do have control as to whether I am going to allow myself to feel whatever I feel when I feel it. I can control how kind I am to myself when things don't go my way, and I do control how often I hold myself in a space of love and acceptance no matter what is going on out there.
I might have a broken foot, but I am feeling way more "whole" now than I did just a month ago when all of my bones were fully connected. Maybe sometimes we need to be taken out of the game for a little while to evaluate what is our purpose and intention before we get back on the court.
And maybe we need reminders that while bones or even our hearts may break through the business of living, the peace that lives in our souls can remain unbroken...
In the meantime, I will focus on healing myself in the only way there really is to heal, which is to let my body do what it needs to do and not judge it. And along the way maybe I can make the best use of my sedentary time and just "Be" without always having to "Do". It's not like I have much of a choice anyway...And at this juncture in life...I am becoming more "Ok" not having the imagined control I used to think I had.