Pain

Oh my goodness, people….the promises I made in that MRI machine! You have no idea. Pain had consumed me and I begged the Universe, or God, or my dad, or the nurse, or my mystical divine Goddess or anyone or anything that would listen. The tube just clanked and sputtered and rattled and buzzed while my tears fell, silently. I remember hearing the nurse through those ridiculous headphones, “Gretchen, are you doing alright?” What could I even say to her?

About two months ago, at the beginning of September, eager to get back into a fitness routine at the club, I hurt myself. So typical of me and all my energy and determination. Honestly, I always miss my kids when they go back to school, but it’s also a wonderful transition back to a normal schedule, so I was psyched to get back into shape. I’m not exactly sure how it happened, perhaps the rigorous elliptical session or the intervals on the treadmill or the weight lifting, but the next morning I was pretty sure I pulled my left glute muscle. It felt like I tore it into pieces. My poor butt! Then, being the tough mother fucker that I am, I walked about 3 miles the very next morning, “to try to work it all out.” And then I was in agony. Plus, super pissed off. So I rested for a few days, but it just kept getting worse.

The doctor said it wasn’t my butt that was injured, it was my back. And that’s how I ended up in the MRI tube, bawling my eyes out, writhing in pain and making some elaborate promises.

“I’ll lose 30 pounds!” “I’ll finish my book now!” “I’ll treat my body kindly!” “I’ll dedicate myself to solving homelessness!” “I’ll learn self-love!” “I’ll be a better wife!” “I’ll never ever forget to work out again, plus, I’ll eliminate all sugar, dairy, legumes, gluten, meat, chocolate, grains, alcohol and nightshades (whatever those are) immediately, no biggie, I’ll eat buckets of berries and bok choy!”

“I PROMISE I’LL LIVE A PERFECT LIFE FROM NOW ON! …just please, please, let my back be ok and make this pain go away.”

It didn’t go away. I tried to withstand it for another week or so, determined to meditate and pelvic tilt the pain away. To no avail. Eventually I found myself, at a surgery center, face down on a table, two valiums in me, getting an injection into my spine. The nurses were lovely, but I got a little panicky in the recovery room. They kept coming in to check on me and my pain and numbness, etc, but each time it was a different nurse. I was getting a little paranoid that maybe I was just one of like 700 other patients they needed to check on. And perhaps it was the valium speaking, but to every single nurse I said, “this injection just has to work because I’m a very important person, I can’t be sidelined like this, I have very important things to do.” omg. I need a prescription for valium. It was delightful.

The good news is that those nurses did take care of their very important patient and the injection did provide some relief.

In the meantime though, I was reduced to the bare minimum of existence. My kids saw me scream in pain. The looks on their faces as they helped me get dressed and go to the bathroom won’t leave my mind soon. John had to help me put my tampons in…because obviously, I got my period in the middle of all of this. Which is just plain cruel. I had to eat off of a plate on the floor, sort of shoveling food messily to my mouth. Speaking of the floor, that’s where I slept. John treated me and my vicious temper with sweetness and even set up a cocoon on our bedroom floor to try to make me somewhat comfortable. Sometimes I couldn’t make it up the stairs and he set up his camping pad and sleeping bag on the floor next to me in the living room. But there was very little sleep and clearly, there was absolutely no sex.

Pain.

So many different types of pain in life.

I recently ordered tickets to David’s orchestra concert and felt such heaviness in my heart that this was just one more beautiful concert that my dad would be missing. That’s Sad Pain.

Some days I feel a pang in my heart that I really wish I had at least worked part-time while raising our kids. I might find it easier to find a career path at this point in my life. That’s Regret Pain.

Occasionally it will hit me smack in the face that John is still looking for that perfect job, six months later, and our nest egg is running on empty. That’s Uncertainty Pain.

When the snow started to fly, and David and Annika were still 20 minutes from home, in the dark, on icy roads, including a gigantic bridge that I could just see them careening off into the deep cold river hundreds of feet below, omg that’s Anxiety Pain.

When I read about the Big Wide World Worries of gun violence…white supremacists…hate crimes, I get shaky in my brain and ragged in my breathing. That’s Fear Pain.

And then there’s Body Pain. I’ve been blessed to be essentially physically pain-free my entire life. Some people live with chronic back pain and I cannot imagine how horribly grueling that must be, day in and day out. I’ve definitely hurt myself over the years and given birth three times and had back surgery about 20 years ago. But in general, I’ve been spared from so much suffering.

How we deal with pain varies wildly. I really wish I was better at it. “Life is Pain, Princess,” rings in my head from one of my favorite movies, The Princess Bride. And yeah, suffering is universal. And truthfully, if someone tells you differently, they really are probably trying to sell you something. Many people, often most glaringly on social media, for sure sell the idea that they’ve successfully figured out a way to prevent discomfort, frustration, agony, hurt and I’m all for problem solving, but pain is a fact of life.

I feel like if I were better at dealing with pain, it might be less, um, painful? …but I’m not sure that’s true. Pain is pain. I don’t think you can get around it and I’m pretty sure you can’t avoid it.

So I accepted it. What choice did I have?

And after some time resting and recovering, I went to the bathroom on my own. And then I got up the stairs on my own. And then I was driving Lydia to swim. And then I slept in my own bed.  And then John and I had sex (gently). And I was literally the luckiest person in the world!

Except. Time out. I have to be honest. Let’s go back to my crazy workout at the club. If I truly contemplate the sequence of events, I have to admit that I worked out like a maniac because I had just come from a very frustrating hour of marriage counseling. Talk about pain. That’s Relationship Pain. And I guess I was so furious, that I took it out on my body, by accident. I don’t know. Anger has a physical component in more ways than one, apparently.

I don’t remember exactly what happened in therapy that particular day, except I’m sure I was predictably self-righteous and obnoxiously obstinate. Our marriage is 27 years old and it’s been through four miscarriages, the untimely death of both my father and John’s mother, a gigantic move from Massachusetts to Minnesota, a fallen brick house, our daughter’s bone disease and, to date, at least eight marriage counselors have helped our marriage survive. A marriage needs as much emotional attention as a member of a family. Often we refer to it as a separate person, “The Marriage.” As in, “The Marriage has to go talk to Dr. K. today.”

Anyway, I think I need to accept that I hurt myself. Not on purpose, but really, numerous decisions led me to be in that wild state at the club that day. What does it mean to “own it.” “You gotta own it.” People say that all the time. (insert eye roll) “Own it.” Yeah, shit definitely happens, but what led me to marriage counseling in general and then a punishing workout more specifically is really mine to own. sigh.

So. What would it look like if I “owned it?” That’s a good question. I don’t really know. If I were talking to my teenagers, we’d be discussing how to maturely take responsibility for our decisions. And I’d harp on how it’s an older human’s job to teach a younger human that each decision leads to an outcome. another sigh.  Decision→ Outcome. Why is this so challenging to apply to myself? I’m not exempt from this rule of logic, just because I’m cute and smart and grown up. It just seems like I was so hell-bent on teaching this to my kids that I forgot that I too live in the same goddamned world. Sadly, there isn’t a different rule of humanity for moms. We’re people too.

Own it, Gretchen. Show your kids! You try, you fall, you try again, you fall, you adjust, you learn and most of the time, the consequences match the decision that you made. So in my case, the mishandling of marital stress over the course of a few busy years, will eventually lead to massive efforts to untangle the mess in a therapist’s office. And, the chronic forgetting to go work out over the course of a few busy years, will eventually lead to a massive effort to get back into shape. And I think those to realities collided for me, in me, on September 6.  And I broke once again.

Breathe. Practice Acceptance. Try Again. Continue to appreciate this Cosmic Paradox we’re in…what we control and what we do not control. And we could all use an extra dash of grace and pinch of whimsy. NO, not whiskey, whimsy.

I’m not saying that pain isn’t serious; emotional and physical pain is heavy. But suffering is here to stay, I’m afraid. In the meantime, grace and whimsy are available to us as well. For me, grace must come first, to let my shoulders down out of my ears so that I can hear humor and my hands off of my eyes so that I can see joy. Until that happens, whimsy will allude me.

So as I work on what it means for me to “own it” the way I ask my kids to own their shit, I will — at the exact same time — work on what it means to give myself grace and look for the whimsy in my life.

“I promise, that even in the face of pain, I will remember that I am OK.”

xo