Running through the peaks and valleys of this injury is providing me some mental cardio, if nothing else. I haven't written because I've been either really down, or really restless and just feeling like I'm on "hold" and waiting for it to be over. There've been a few things I wanted to write about but on the whole, nothing's really going on. But today when I walked out of PT I felt great. It helped that I was able to do something I hadn't been able to do two days ago, and the things that I could do, I was able to do even more of than last time. I finally felt like you know what, maybe this guy is right, maybe I really will be able to do everything I could do before.
Speaking of my physical therapist, I had this weird idea that maybe he wasn't familiar with goalies and what goalies' knees and legs need to be able to do. Maybe it's because I've found it so hard to believe that I'll be "fine" by the time he says I will be, that makes me think he doesn't realize exactly what I need to be able to do. I figured a tactful way to ask would be to ask if he watched hockey, and go from there. I needn't have worried. Turns out he went to school in Buffalo. And had lots of Canadian friends. And that's what they did- watched hockey. The poor guy: when he came back to NJ one of the years the Devils won the Cup he was all excited... and no one around here gave a crap. Man, what a way to lose a fan. Maybe I can get him hooked again.
As good as I felt this morning and as happy with my progress that I have been today, I still have this nagging anxiety. A few days ago someone at work remarked that I looked like I'd lost weight. I scoffed- how could that be, I've been sitting on my ass for 4 weeks? But then it hit me. I have. Lots of muscle, and I've heard somewhere that muscle weighs more than fat. I don't have a scale at home, but my clothes don't lie- all my pants are falling off. That enormous goalie-butt I was so self conscious about? GONE. What the hell? How does that happen? Muscles built up over a period of 5 years just disappear in the span of 6 weeks? Is that even physically possible? How in the world am I going to get back into the net and do anything useful if I'm playing with one decent leg and half an ass?
I know. I know. I still have a lot of work to do. But dammit it's SO FRUSTRATING to see all the work I did do, completely gone to waste. Gah.
But I'm doing something constructive with all this angst. Well, not yet. But I will. Soon. Really. I've been going to my teams' games, which really in retrospect has been a huge mistake, especially the Hawks games. The guy subbing for me is good, and has a wicked glove hand. So I watch from the bench as he flashes the leather and wonder "would I really have had that?". I decided that my time would be much better spent throwing tennis balls against a wall than freezing my (diminished) ass off on the bench and letting doubt creep into my mind. I can not express how much I hate the tennis-ball-off-the-wall thing. Really and truly. It frustrates the everloving shit out of me. But if I want to improve, that is what I have to do. Over and over until I can catch the damn thing more than twice in a row. And then more than three times in a row, and so on until my glove hand becomes slightly less embarrassing.
It really won't take much, just a concerted effort to do it every single day. And how much time can it take? I just drag my feet because I know how bad I suck at it, which pisses me off. The only way around that is through it. Man, sometimes I just want to smack that cheerleader in my head. I hate it when she's right.
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