Well, I suppose it was tempting fate to commit to a race and actually get my hopes up. My track record of being healthy and whole in the past two years has been spotty at best. After my gorgeous Monterey run at the start of February that blew up my foot, the pain kept getting worse.
After seeing a podiatrist, who first recommended an orthopedic shoe that brought only more pain, I was told my only hope was a cast for the next four weeks. While I was only diagnosed with inflammation, it seems pretty certain that this is a stress fracture. Dealing with bouts of malnutrition for the past 9 years has clearly taken a toll on my body, to have two fractures in a year.
Looking back on the past two years is illuminating. The yellow dates are when I had an injury or chronic illness symptoms severe enough to make it hard or impossible to run.
Yeah, not great. And 2025 felt definitely markedly worse than 2024 (though 2024 definitely wasn’t great either). The best analogy I’ve come up with is that my life is a series of sprints through an obstacle course full of trap doors. And I never know when the trap doors are coming so I go as fast as I can, trying to cram in as many dreams, and runs and races. But then before I ever get where I’m trying to reach, the ground opens up underneath me and down I plummet.
The holes are different sizes - some are shallow, while others are so deep I can’t see the sky. And after weeks or months of painstakingly clawing my way out, I start moving again. Slowly at first, still recovering from the fall, but forever pushing myself to do more. To be faster. To try to reach my goals. Knowing the next trap door could be at any minute. And that one of the trap doors in my future has no bottom at all. And when I fall through that one, I’ll never find my way out.
So I spend all my time in the pit worrying about the next fall, the time wasted, the worry that I’ll never be free long enough to get anywhere.
And while in the grand scheme of things, 4 weeks in a cast to heal a stress fracture is small, it comes on the heels of a terrible flu, and before that, a month of bronchitis, of a three month fibromyalgia flare, or anemia, of a three week gastroparesis flare where I couldn’t eat, and before that a broken kneecap, which came with its own terrible fibromyalgia flare, because being injured means my brain feels like I am in danger and so decides to make it worse.
And all that in a year has made me more and more desperate to escape this chronically ill body. To sprint faster and faster, to dream bigger, to try to outrun the misfortune of having a body that is always breaking down.
So it may just be four weeks, but it truth it’s causing me to have a real reckoning with who I fundamentally am as a person. I need to stop trying to escape myself and find a way to live within my limitations. To give up pretending that I am a healthy person, who then is devastated every time my body fails.
I’m not yet sure what that will mean. If it means I’m giving up running entirely, or simply taking away the pressure and the plans, I’m not sure. I think it means finally overcoming my fear of strength training, as it’s something that can be done around most of my limitations. It also means finding ways to enjoy nature that aren’t running based.
Tonight I used my knee scooter to go 1.2 miles on the path by the lake. Much more exhausting that walking or even running. But I got to move. And then I sat in the car and watched the sunset. As I sat, I pictured myself sitting in beautiful places, even when I can’t walk. Of being grateful for being in nature, even if it’s also a parking lot. Of finding joy even amidst frustration and sorrow for a life I am just never going to have.
Accepting life as a disabled person is hard. I’ve very much fought against that label for a very long time. But when I was at my doctor appointment for my foot, I looked and I have 13 documented current disabling health issues. It’s time to see my life through a different, more forgiving and more accommodating lens.
It’s a terrifying prospect but there’s no way out but forward. Hoping that this will lead me to a new path, a gentler one where I don’t need to sprint and the obstacles are gentle depressions where I can rest when I need and then walk back out the other side.
We’ll see what the future brings.
