It’s hard for me to write about my own relationship with my body. My body has been the subject of so many posts, but always as the object of other people’s either revulsion or derision. I want to claim some space and some air time and in doing so I push aside:
what happened in the mall yesterday when I got off the elevator to the horrified expressions about my body by mother and daughter
what happened in the gym when, for the first time another member, one that I’ve not seen before, came out of the weight room, saw me exercising and burst into laughter
what happened that made me have Joe move to block the view of people openly gawking at me when I was waiting in line to make a purchase
It isn’t easy to push these aside. They all call to be written about, but that’s not what I want to write about. I want to write about me, and my relationship with my body. It is after all mine and it makes sense that I would have my own issues with where I live.
Many of you know that I’ve been exercising. Most of the work I’ve been doing is upper body work but I’ve been moving into, very limited, lower body work. I discovered I can ‘march in place’ while sitting in the wheelchair. I can do leg lifts and foot circles. I can, when standing, lean against the wall and do some standing leg exercises. I have to be careful because falling is definitely an option with these ones. So, I am exercising as much of me as I can.
About a week or two ago I encountered a big ramp, long, steep and, I thought, impassible. Then without thinking I turned around and placed my back wheels at the base of the ramp. I lifted the foot pedals to give myself room. Then using my legs and my arms I started. Pushing with my legs, pulling with my arms, I quickly, really quickly, made the top of the ramp. I wasn’t even breathing hard.
Later when thinking about it, I discounted the achievement. I had done it with the help of my legs, it didn’t count. I used the same technique in a couple of other places and again, I dismissed these as non-accomplishments, I’d used my legs. In my mind, and I was set on this, it’s only the arms that matter.
It was then I realized that I was angry at my legs.
I remember the exact moment my legs failed me. I remember having to leave 3/4 the way through a day long presentation because I’d lost the use of my legs. I remember getting out of bed to go to the bathroom and falling down, knocking furniture every which way. I remember being so frightened when I woke up in intensive care. I remember all of that. My legs gave out. My life changed.
Please do not read this and interpret it into the typical disability narrative, I am happy with who I am as a disabled person, I’m even grateful for this journey and what it’s meant to me, but standing one day, falling the next takes some adjustment.
In all the busyness of hospitalization and the introduction of the wheelchair and the getting home and reestablishing new routines, I never had much time to think about my legs and their failure and the impact of that failure on my life. And because I didn’t, I’ve discovered a kind of residual anger at my legs. I kind of developed an ‘okay, you aren’t going to work, I’ll show you I don’t need you’ attitude. It’s an attitude that served me well, but it’s an attitude that needs both examination and resolution.
My legs don’t do what they originally did. But they can add to my mobility, and that’s okay. It counts. It matters. Getting up a long, steep, ramp, is getting up a long, steep, ramp. That’s all. It doesn’t matter how it’s done, it’s still my body doing it, it’s still my independent action that got me to the top. It’s still me doing it.
So, I’m working to make peace with my legs.
To accept them as possible solutions to impassible terrain.
And to have it matter to me that my arms and my legs can work together to get me further.
I have legs.
They help me sometimes.
I need to get over that.
