Embrace your Pain (12 Weeks + 3 Days)

J'embrasse mon rival mais c'est pour l'étouffer.

(I embrace my rival, but it is to strangle him.)

Jean Racine (1639-1699)

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One time in college, I set out to make an inspirational poster for one of my teammates. This was pre-Internet era, so inspirational quotes were not a Google stop away. I had two books of quotes, one of which was full of quotations from only French authors. Flipping through the book, I found the quote above. It didn't quite work for inspiring better diving, so after a lot of 'fiddling,' I finally came up with: Embrace your fears, and you will strangle them.

It is like our diving coach used to tell us: It is okay to have butterflies, you just have to make them fly in formation. 

I was once an accomplished athlete. My main sports were gymnastics, and later diving, both of which involve a significant amount of fear. I could have been so much better than I was, but unfortunately, fear always got the best of me. My physical abilities were always ten steps ahead of my mental abilities. The thing is that fear and anxiety are a cycle, just like pain is a cycle. Looking back, I think that I sometimes feared the horrible feeling of fear itself rather than the actual dive. I detested that feeling of shaking legs and standing on the end of the diving board full of self doubts, wondering if I actually had it in me to throw myself off the board, do two and a half flips, and override all human instinct and land on my head. When I managed to put these thoughts out of my head, the dive itself wasn't ever difficult for me.

With my current hip ordeal, I've been told I need to break the pain cycle, and I've tried so many things to do this. So far, these things haven't worked. Now I think I need to break the cycle of fear and anxiety and stress. I realized recently that my stress about my pain is worse than the pain itself, just as my fear of doing a back 2 1/2 in diving was worse than the worst thing that ever happened to me from actually doing it. I need a break from the stress. I need a break from worrying about the pain and a break from my constant appointments with Dr. Google and a break from wondering what is wrong with me and why I'm not better and why surgery didn't work and... and... and...

I have an appointment with my orthopedist next Friday, a week from tomorrow. Until then, I'm just going to accept the pain for what it is and do the best that I can with it. Because at this point, it is the stress about my pain that is killing me, not the pain itself. I am tough. I can deal with physical pain. It's the mental stuff that has always gotten the best of me. So I need to tend to the mental part of this.

Embrace your pain and you will strangle it.