the strength to gamble

A few weeks ago, I started learning Tai Chi. Living near Sunset Park in Brooklyn, which has a large population of Chinese immigrants (and even its own Chinatown), I’ve always been intrigued when I see large groups practicing this slow, meditative martial art. In unison, their bodies twist and turn and their arms flow with purpose, pulling energy deep from within to build power and strength.

If by chance we actually are all the same energy being reincarnated over and over, I certainly have spent past lives performing this practice. Not because I’m good at it or remember the moves, but because it feels like home. Or perhaps, church. Focusing solely on the movements allows everything else to fall away. It also gives my body space and purpose for moving and turning in all the ways that my modern life and desk job don’t allow it to.

At the same time, as much as I love it already, I look around my class at all of the senior age people who have come for all of their individual reasons (which are probably mostly the same – pain, stiffness, unsteadiness, disease), and I wonder why I have arrived here so early. I’m usually the youngest in the class by at least a decade. My yoga class is the same way. Over the years, I’ve gravitated towards Iyengar yoga which has you hold the poses for long periods of time and focus on alignment. I love practicing yoga, and now Tai Chi, and am so grateful to have found these methods for easing pain and creating more space in the body and mind, but it also makes me sad and angry that I don’t really have a choice about going to these classes. If I don’t go, my body throws a tantrum like a toddler, tensing and screaming.

This week, though, I’m having surgery. After 10+ years of on-again, off-again (and mostly on-again) pain, and thousands of dollars of scans and specialists, physical therapy, and therapy therapy, we may have located the trigger. Or at least one of them.

I’m excited and terrified. Will the surgery work? Will it all be for naught? Or even worse, will it create new problems?

All of the best things in life are a gamble. And I know what life looks like if I don’t go through with the surgery. A life that has an undercurrent of inflammatory ache with spikes of sharp pains that come from seemingly nothing. Where I spend copious amounts of time, energy, and money seeking solutions. Where I cautiously plan and then often cancel trips and outings. I have to carefully consider each choice I make of what to do with with my body and when. And mostly just in hope of tempering the pain, not actually alleviating it.

On the flip side, I also know there are plenty of people in way worse situations and more pain than I am. So the other part of me thinks I should just suck it up and stop complaining. But I’ve tried that method, too. There’s a whole sect of pain management that purports that those of us who have long-term pain can – and must – coach our brain to ignore the pain signals. And you know what? You kind of can. According to this theory, the nerves may have been initially activated by an injury but then mistakenly got “left on” and continue to send pain signals even though there isn’t an injury anymore. Essentially, they’ve become hypersensitive. I tried this method for awhile and was moderately successful but then found myself ignoring signals that actually required, and were solved by, a doctor’s visit. I was essentially gaslighting myself.

Chronic pain is a wild place to live.

But in less than a week’s time, I’ll take my shot at escaping or at least quieting the angry beast. I’m ready to bet the house.