Adjustment

A thing I’ve come to understand over the last week is that I’m much stronger than I give myself credit for.

I’ve always thought of myself as That Person — you know, the one who was sick as a kid, who takes too many pills, who can’t build muscle, who’s just a sedentary geek.  A person who is weak, physically and otherwise.  I generally don’t test myself or push myself physically because I’ve always had that outlook, which is one that my my mother unhesitatingly encouraged and my father tried to change.  She’s always given me the impression that I’m fragile, like she thinks she is.  If I overextend myself, I’ll hurt myself, put my neck out, twist an ankle, break a rib.  So I never tried.  I was terrified of gym class and running and sports (although to be fair, I couldn’t do most of gym because of an actual growth disorder in which the tendons in my knees were tearing from the inside out).

So, fast forward to last week, in which I helped move nearly a thousand bales of hay over the course of two days.  During those sessions, I beat myself up constantly for not being able to keep up with the stronger people around me, and although I pushed myself to do the absolute best job that I could, surprising myself with my own endurance despite having very little muscle mass and flimsy hands, I was constantly aware that I would pay for it.  Tomorrow’s gonna suck, I thought, but kept working because I wanted to help, to be part of the team.  Not to be the weak little geek-princess nursing her aching hands in the corner.

I woke up the morning after the first moving day and was utterly shocked that I had no pain.  No neck pain, no muscle pain, nothing.  No blisters on my hands, no sore throat from the hay dust.

Obviously I didn’t work hard enough, I told myself, and went straight back to hauling hay later that afternoon.

Woke up the next day with one sore shoulder — not from exertion, but from when a rope snapped over the bone.  A bruise, nothing more.

A fluke!  I exclaimed, and forgot about it.

Today, I’m starting to re-evaluate that assumption, because yesterday I earned my Real Horsewoman distinction and fell off a horse.

Now, to be fair, Beau was standing still at the time, and I was practicing swinging up from the ground, and misjudged how enormous my horse is in a rather hilarous manner.  I got up…and fell right back off.  Beau spread all his legs and looked under himself with an expression that rather implied, “My goodness, there’s a monkey under me, is it all right?”

Which is to say, I fell directly on my sacro-illiac from a height of approximately eighteen hands, onto asphalt and hard-packed gravel.  Not exactly small peanuts.  Achey and stiff most of that evening, I readily assumed that I would wake up the next day in agony.  I assumed, as you do, that my hip would be out and I would limp badly, and that it would take a few days to recover from, if not a chiropractic appointment.

Body says nope.

Body says “nice bruise, champ!” and gave me barely a twinge when I rolled out of bed.

What I am learning from horseback riding and all the side-jobs that come with it is that I am not nearly as weak and fragile as I’ve assumed for twenty-some-odd years, and that perhaps now I can stop thinking of myself as a delicate and useless flower. 

“Weak and fragile” and “no problem falling off a Percheron” do not belong in the same sentence.

Time to adjust the lens.