Most of you know I am coming off a couple of tough years because of my back problems. Last March I had surgery, which finally gave me some relief, so 2008 was much better, but I consider it kind of a rebuilding year. I am really not sure how to describe how incredible 2009 has been so far.
It's not that everything has gone my way, not by any stretch of the imagination. I've dealt with work stresses, financial stresses, the usual. But it's been an incredible year because, well, I feel like me again. And I kind of like me.
Let me back up, to before the surgery. If you're reading this, I hope for your sake that you have never had to deal with chronic pain. I have always thought of myself as tough, a fighter, all that jazz. But there is a huge difference between toughing out pain for a few hours, days, even weeks, and living in pain.
Living in pain changes you. You don't want it to--you fight against it. You try to keep going out with your friends, to keep being a happy and bubbly person. You win a few battles sometimes, maybe when you are having a good day, but until you eliminate the pain itself, you are always losing the war.
Pain makes you tired, unhappy. You live your life in survival mode, trying to get through each day, or even just the next hour until you can take another pain pill. Your friends might call you, but you rarely call them--what would you have to talk about, since all you do every day is somehow get through work, then come home and stretch out on the couch with a heating pad?
And slowly but surely, "you" slips away so far that you're not sure you'll ever find her again.
I am one of the lucky ones, because for me, there was a path out of the pain. But when the pain goes away, "you" does not automatically come back. That's why I call last year a rebuilding year. For the first several month after the surgery, there was a physical rebuilding process. The pyschological took much longer.
It's odd to look back and realize that, as slowly and surely as I slipped away, just as surely I found my way back, slipped back into my former self. By the end of the year, in most ways, I was back to me.
With one exception. One of my goals after the surgery was to get back to being active and lose the weight I had gained through my inactivity. Well, I was walking a couple times a week, but wasn't doing much more than that, and I definitely hadn't made any changes to my diet. That change finally came this February.
I can't really tell you why I started losing weight when I did. It was the day after my team won the Super Bowl in an unbelievable game, and just a couple weeks after we inaugurated our first black president. I guess I was feeling inspired and decided that was the day I would start. At first I was just watching my calories and being a little more active. Then in April we moved, to a neighborhood a little better suited to walking and running. Since my surgeon gave me the okay to return to running when I saw him in March, I thought it was good timing.
I got a slow start, but by July I was running 2-3 times a week, working on a "Couch to 5K" training program a friend gave me. And today, I am 27 pounds lighter and ran my first 5K this morning.
This is the me I remember. The me who sets a goal and works until I reach it, who does things in the community, who spends time with friends, who gets great joy out of little things, who is passionate and motivated, who takes care of myself and tries to take care of others.
I am me again. Maybe even a little better version of me.
