Why My Body Is Smarter Than I Am

When I got an “I put pants on today” sticker for my computer, I thought it was a kind of funny metaphor for the small victory of just getting through the day. I never expected it would express a literal major achievement.

Then I broke my back, and, now, putting pants on is literally the hardest thing I do each day. My PT put the ix-nay on bending, twisting, and lifting, and anyways, the robovest that keeps my spine in place takes its job pretty seriously, so my toes have become prehensile, my legs are learning flamingo, and then the mechanical grabby arms get involved (I’ve never identified so much with a t-rex). Suffice it to say, I’m mining my 90s skater girl wardrobe for awhile while the skinny jeans gather dust.

Everything, from pants to turning on the car radio to making a bowl of cereal, takes longer because I have to relearn how to move with my new constraints (thank god for those pliès I learned in kindergarten ballet class and my small robo army of grabby poles in every room).

When it first happened, I was in the final weeks of teaching college classes for the semester and planning an educational clinic for the horse rescue. The kids had concerts, events, and birthdays. I was alive and not paralyzed, as I so easily could have been, so I tightened up my big girl corset and drove the kids to the places, went to class, went shopping, went to the barn. I wanted things to be “normal.” My new normal, however, needed to include lie-down breaks every hour or so when my back started screaming. So I’d send texts and make calls and manipulate miniature spreadsheets on my phone.

Then my brain got foggy. I’m ordinarily forgetful, but this was a bit beyond, like trying to find my glasses (which are clear; good planning there, Janna) without my glasses on. I’d catch glimpses of what I wanted to say or needed to do, but couldn’t quite make them out or hold onto them. I worried maybe I’d sustained a concussion after all, despite the helmet. So I read up on it. Turns out brains need rest. Literal physical rest. They get injured. They get tired. And I wasn’t letting mine recuperate with my little black box inches above my face for hours at a time trying to stay on top of work even laid out flat.

Then at PT, as I’m trying to power through some muscle contractions, my physical therapist intones, “and now, rest.” And it hit me like the dirt pack that had compressed my vetebra should have. Muscles need rest periods, too, in order to function at their best and grow stronger.

Rest is where strength comes from. So my body is much smarter than I am; I just wish it hadn’t taken an extreme act of physics to make me realize it. No matter how much I try to power through, I can’t actually get anywhere without slowing down. There’s a saying good horse trainers abide by: “go slow to go fast.” My normal doesn’t admit to a “slow” setting. My new body, however, is dictating a new normal, and it includes not only “slow,” but “stop.” And stop means not just getting into the bed to let the body mend, but letting the brain get its share of rest, too, and that’s a really hard muscle to relax.

Putting pants on each day is actually hard, for all of us in all of the ways, but it turns out the sticker I need most is not the one that celebrates something that went on but one that congratulates me for turning something off.