The Long Road Back

Recovery reflections while on the cusp of being 5 months post-op, involving "ACL Reddit" and my husband's three-day journey to drive down our Boston

Happy Sunday, friends. Thanks, as usual, for joining me to read about my recovery journey.

This one is going to be quick because, in a "rigor mortis" burst of productivity, endings, and beginnings, I'm doing a ton of prep for a lot of things hitting hard in the next few weeks. More to come on those developments in posts I'll write before the end of September. But between offboarding, onboarding, traveling, networking, and more, I'm expecting to realign, right-size, and reprioritize a few things in my life. I hope my recovery will benefit from the determinations and decisions I've made in the last few weeks that should carry me onward and upward through the end of the year and into the next one.

A few rough thoughts, though, before I go back to running errands:

Pictured: the contents of my storage unit in Boston. The reason for some of the busy-ness on my end? Preparing to accommodate all this stuff in our house in Atlanta in T-minus 24 hours.

Five Months Post-Op: Comparisons and Perspective

I'm entering my fifth month post-op this week, and I'll admit, seeing that the ACL subreddit is filled with hikers, runners, and jumpers reporting out with proud pictures and videos at this temporal milestone, I'm a little sad. Unlike other parts of the internet, or at least the parts in which I spend the most time (read: BJJ Instagram–the LinkedIn of jiu-jitsu and one of the worst places to let your mind rot–that's a post for a different time), the ACL subreddit is as filled with cringe as it is of support, so I'll drop in and read things here and there. Even now, it's still hard to not compare myself to others–people I know who have had the surgery and strangers on the internet alike–but it doesn't break my heart or tear my soul to shreds when I think about my progress relative to others. The moment where I realized this was when FaceTiming with old training partners on Saturday night, being asked about my recovery, whether I was dying to get back, how I was doing, and I didn't tear up about it. I didn't get broken up over it much at all. Does this mean I've made peace with my recovery truly occurring at a pace that I do not control and cannot define, and can only influence with nutrition, physical therapy, and time? Maybe. Mostly, I want to be able to enjoy my honeymoon in roughly one month and walk around Kyoto and Tokyo to my heart's utter contentment (and stomach's–I've been craving sushi).

Reflecting on "The Old Life" and Grappling with Shifts in Identity

The other thing that's on my mind is the concept of "the old life." This weekend, I've been flying solo at home, dogs boarded with the vet because I went to a writing retreat and I didn't want to leave them home alone, and because I booked some folks to clean the house–an exercise that is much easier and more pleasant for all involved without two vociferous weenie dogs barking for the three-hour stint of cleaning. It's the first time I've been alone again in years: without husband, pets, etc.

Meanwhile, my husband is retrieving our belongings from our storage unit in Boston, driving down to Atlanta with a friend of his on a bro road trip (a B-Roadtrip? Bro-adtrip?), and he joked that I should probably revisit a blog post I wrote years ago, when we packed up the unit, on a paraphrase of the line from the movie version of Eat Pray Love: how most people don't come back for the whole of their old life (see below)

zenintheartoffighting

A post shared by @zenintheartoffighting

I thought about this concept again, too, when at the dentist this week. My dentist moved from Boston to Atlanta, like me, and has two young kids. She's hoping to get them into jiu-jitsu training, she tells me, knowing I train and teach. I gave her my number, told her to text me when she was coming in, saying that in spite of my knee surgery, I'm there sometimes to watch and my husband is there almost every day. "Wow, he must be really good," she comments with awe, and I exchange a card with my phone number on it for the usual dental goodbye bag of floss, toothbrush, and travel-sized toothpaste. I tell her to drop my name to the staff, let me know when she was coming in, maybe see me there.

Something about the comment that my husband must be good–but that I was not–made me a little emotional. I, indulging my ego, wanted to add, "I'm the reason my husband and I live here. We moved here for jiu-jitsu. I'm the one in the relationship that used to train every day, if not twice a day. I wanted to train under this world-class coach. I quit my job for a year to train full-time and write a book about it! Albeit at blue and purple belt, I've won the World Masters Championships twice!" But I don't correct her, thinking that this old life as a champion would be one I'd have to fight to earn again. I'm not sure I will even want it again in another year's time, let alone be able to achieve it again in a year's time, if I'm not many months pregnant, else not training as competitively or intensely as I used to due to wanting to let the healing run its fullest possible course.

“Unpacking” and Choosing What to Carry Forward

Getting back the things I loved in my life prior to this injury will be a long game, a game of months and years rather than days and weeks. Much like getting all our stuff out of the storage unit 2.5 years later: it's hard to know what will remain important to you in the future. Those things, when I packed them up, were so utterly precious to me, my soul packed up in Home Depot boxes and suitcases. I'm not sure how I will feel when I open them again, a time capsule of Erica at thirty before an immense and life-changing series of adventures. The same is true now, playing my recovery forward. I'm not sure how much of "my old life" I'll want, but I have to believe the things I care about most will be worth making the long journey to get them back.

Closing out

I'm off to assemble a bookshelf–because if there is one thing I know I will be happy to have back from my old life and freed of the storage unit, it's the books I stored in it.

Overall, I’m looking forward to rediscovering what's truly important as me unpack my old life, both literally and figuratively.

Thanks for reading and see you next week,

EZ

Pictured: my husband with the U-HAUL of our belongings that have been in storage in Massachusetts since we went on our road trip in 2021. He and his friend are doing the blessed service of packing up our stuff in Boston and driving it down south over three days. I can’t say I have FOMO, but even if I wanted to participate in this endeavor, my leg wouldn’t allow it.