Learning to Be Still

I’m going out of my mind. For the past 4 weeks I have been sick or injured in some capacity. It started with a case of strep throat, which led to a bought of bronchitis and has finally evolved into strained back muscles from excessive coughing. The ironic thing about all this illness is that the actually sickness itself doesn’t bother me. I can deal with the sore throat, fever, and body aches that came with the strep. The coughing and tight chest from the bronchitis, no big deal. The back pain, piece of cake. What I can’t deal with, however, is the inability to exercise that has resulted from this prolonged illness.

Summer has finally arrived in northern Ohio; the sun is shining; the air smells of flowers and fresh cut grass, and I have the worst case of cabin fever. As I sit here in bed writing, looking outside, my new running shoes are calling to me from their cubby in the closet. I bought them over a month ago and still no inaugural run. I think they are starting to get sad… or maybe that’s just me. For someone whose self-esteem and identity is tightly wound up in how many miles she can run or how much weight she can lift, not being able to work out has taken a toll on my feelings of self-worth. I find myself getting anxious, depressed, and slightly neurotic. My new favorite question to ask my boyfriend has become, “what if I never get better; what if there is always something wrong with me?” It’s a very real fear I have, and even though he often manages to punch through it with logic and reasoning, there is still this lingering fear that he might be wrong.

“Get back in bed; go lie down.” I’ve been hearing this one a lot from my boyfriend also. I’m standing in the mirror trying to see if it looks like my muscle are getting smaller or my butt is getting bigger and he ushers me back to the couch, beseeching me to just rest. He’s right. He knows it. My rational side knows it. But my stubborn side, the one that still sometimes likes to mingle with the enemy, to converse with the eating disorder, doesn’t want to listen. It fills my head with images of my body ballooned out to 300 lbs. “Do you want to look like that?” it asks. “Do you want to be lazy? Then go ahead and rest.” My rational side begs me to listen. “Rest,” it tells me, “or you will risk injuring yourself worse.” And here is where the anxiety lies. If I rest now I am lazy and fat, but if I don’t rest now, I will double my recovery time.

So now I must ask myself this question: why is it so hard to be still? Why does taking a month off from my normal workout routine to recover from illness freak me out so much? The more important question might be: why is my identity so wrapped up in my athletic ability anyway? I know I am more than a number; whether that number is my fastest 5k time, how many pounds I can bench press, or how many risers I put on my step for step class. All of those are just things I can do, not things I am. I think the problem I am running into is that for so many years, my athletic ability and my weight constituted the only important part of my identity, and in some way, I’m still stuck in that mindset. I still believe that if I sit in stillness for too long I will lose myself, or at least the part of myself that I value the most.

Here’s wishing for either a speedy recovery or an identity beyond my physical self. Really I wish for both.