Getting through
I went to a new pelvic floor physical therapist on Monday and on Tuesday I went to the DMV to get my learner's permit. Just some little treats to spice up my life! On both occasions I thought about how hard it can be to just stay in my brain and experience discomfort without bailing out into dreamland or phoneland. Like, it's fine to live in the moment if you are, for example, walking down a beautiful street at sunset. Great to live in the moment if you're following a fluffy corgi through the beach dunes. Being in the moment as someone you met twenty minutes ago digitally penetrates you, in a room that is not nearly air conditioned enough, and both of you are wearing surgical masks? Being in the moment as you listen for your number to be called in an infinite litany of out-of-order numbers, as tv sets blare PSAs featuring photos of adorable children who were killed by drunk drivers, and also in this situation obviously everyone is wearing a mask? Absolutely no fucking thank you very much! But I did those things, those things were my main accomplishments this week.
I actually didn't hate going to physical therapy at all, I had been looking forward to telling someone new the story of my body, or maybe it's more like my body's CV. As my 40th birthday looms, I have been thinking more than usual about how I want to live in my body, the only body I'll ever have, in a way that is sustainable for the long haul. I don't want to be in low-grade tolerable pain all the time from my scoliosis. I want to heal my diastasis completely, not just enough to be able to wear non-maternity jeans, but enough to support my spine and organs well. I want to be able to walk around and lift heavy objects/children and carry bags of groceries and run up and down subway stairs, now and far into the future. The idea that mere maintenance is a goal that requires a commitment to a daily not-very-intense regimen of little stretches and exercises and rolling around on foam rollers and rubber balls is, I admit, boring and annoying. Getting ripped or getting cut in order to become progressively hotter and hotter is a much easier sell, so I understand why that's how all forms of exercise are sold. It's weird that I spent so much time in the yoga studio in my 20s without understanding that the whole thing wasn't about mastery and accomplishment so much as it was, or should have been, about avoiding avoidable pain. I mean, add that to the infinite litany of things I wish I had figured out twenty years sooner.
The learner's permit thing is also about trying to undo or revise or compensate for the past, obviously. It would be nice to be able to just go back in time to 1997, take the road test a FOURTH time, pass, and go on with my life like a normal person who can drive. Failing that, though, I will have to go to driving school in NYC. My friend Bennett, when he heard I had gotten my permit, was like "well parking is so much easier now than it used to be because all the cars have those cameras." I was like, "Not my car!" But there is always going to be an excuse, and I haven't so much run out of excuses as I have run out of the meta-excuse of not understanding the extent to which there is always going to be an excuse. If I really can't do it this time, it won't be for lack of trying. In general I am trying not to give myself a pass about things that are "just not in my nature." A lot of the things I want to accomplish are terrifying, and the only way past the terror is through it, through my shitty nature, through myself.