Slow Healing

It’s a bit challenging to sleep well with a broken collarbone. That probably goes without saying. Every little twitch and turn during the night wakes you up.

I somehow managed about 7 hours of sleep last night, which is pretty good with all things considered. I can’t say the bone feels any better or worse than it did on Sunday. It might be that way for awhile.

I am still hopeful to be running again within a few weeks time. But, we’ll see how it goes. I missed the mark by months on my foot injury last year. To an extent, a recovery timeline is out of your control, especially with something such as a bone break.

My bikes remain on their racks in my living room. Because I’m housebound right now, I see them almost every waking moment. I want to visualize myself cycling again and enjoying it. I think that I will eventually, but the experience will be different. I’ll probably be intentionally slower and more vigilant.

That’s sort of how it goes with age in general. We try to repeat the thrills of the past, the adventures that exhilarated us when we were young, and to an extent we can. Yet we don’t have the same cells in our bodies, nor do we have the same minds, to experience those adventures. So we go through the motions, and it’s mostly the same… but it’s a little different. Maybe the once-vibrant colors our eyes saw long ago are now dulled or our emotions are a little more subdued. Maybe we miss the element of surprise or the delusion of feeling invincible.

Healing is also a lonely process. Your pain is uniquely your own. The entire right side of my body remains bruised and bloodied. It has been two days of ripping bloody bandages off of my right side.

To the outside ears, it was a “bike crash.” That has little meaning without feeling. To my own nerves feeling the pain, it is constant misery. Your physical pain cannot be shared; it is monogamous, and clings to you for life. It also sucks. Still, I believe that pain is a necessity. Life and death are painful, so you might as well get used to feeling pain.

In time I will be back. How many times have I said that?