You never know who you are until something is taken away from you. Something you didn't even realize was so important to your very being. And once it leaves you, you miss it so much, that getting it back at times seems almost impossible.
This isn't a post about death, or a loved one, or even a pet. You can put the tissues away now. I'll wait.
For the first time ever (minus those pesky tonsils when I was 8), I had actual surgery a few months ago. Nothing too terribly awful. A torn meniscus in my knee, most likely the result of years of wear and tear and hundreds of hours in the dance studio. After a couple of weeks of barely being able to walk, and various tests, my doctor decided the best thing to do would be to put me under and fix the problem. I have been a fairly active person throughout my life, though I have gone through spurts of what can only be described as pure laziness. But I never really I have thought about how much physical activitity plays a role in my life. I'm a dance teacher for crying out loud... and run my fair share of events here at the office. My stress relief... time at the gym. I'm on my feet constantly. So you can only imagine the fun and games I had when post surgery I tried to move my leg enough to walk into the bathroom. I might as well have been trying to scale Everest. Getting in the shower? Tantamount to becoming a Wallenda and walking across Niagara Falls. I cried. A lot. Simply put, it was frustrating as hell that I couldn't do the simplest of things for what seemed like months.
Two months after surgery I set foot back in the studio thinking I would step right back in to classes and triple and quad pirouettes would be mine just as effortlessly as before. I had been diligently going to physical therapy, so that seemed it should be the case, right? Not so much. I had about as much grace and coordination as an elephant. One who also who had had knee surgery. Had an assistant AND another instructor in there trying to interpret my choreography notes and thoughts... I still feel bad for them... not exactly easy to get inside someone's head and catch their vision. I may not have been the most pleasant of people trying to explain what I THOUGHT it should look like without showing them. And my students-they deserve a Congressional Medal of Honor for putting up with me that first week back.
Now it is another almost three months down the road. I miss everything that came so effortlessy before for me. Being able to dance for the joy of dancing, and not focusing on how my leg was feeling, or if I was going to go off balance and tear something. I was finally cleared by the doctor recently, and I'm back in the gym trying to get myself back in shape AND lose the weight I gained from sitting around half of the winter. Last week, I logged 8 miles on the elliptical. It's a steady improvement. It's Tuesday, and I'm at 10 miles already this week. While teaching class, I managed a double and a roll to the floor and back up last week- and I landed on it solidly, and repeatedly. So I know the old me is in there, just waiting to come back out again... she's fighting and will be back better than ever.
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