Diagnosis is Recognizing

Someone recently said, in one of the communities I'm in, I hear people talking about how diagnosis suddenly creates confidence and self esteem. How does 50 years of feeling like a failure magically disappear when you're diagnosed?

I thought it was such a good observation.

For me, it felt like the answer I'd been looking for, things just started to make more sense. I felt like I understood the reason I am the way I am, and it's not some sort of moral failing on my part- I am the way I am not because I am a bad person- rotten in some way- but because of how I am made.

It's like all my life I was a cake, but someone put in salt instead of sugar and I have been trying to pick the grains of salt out one by one so I can be a cake again but then someone recognized me and said oh no, you're actually bread and I could stop trying to be cake and just be me.

I think this is probably how it feels for a while. I still feel like I need to be cake sometimes even though I know I'm bread. There are so many different kinds of cake, and bread... and it feels like what the world really is asking me for is what's right and wrong instead of the actual question: what is it like to be you?

What is it like to be me? I have spent most of my life in my thoughts, thinking my way through life with my brain that didn't know why it was failing and so kept trying harder. The ways I fight my nature, the senses I have ignored and shit on, shut down, and the gestures I have made to do something with my body besides think in secret and hide behind the curtain.

There is a light, there is a light.

Yesterday in my session with my somatic practitioner I had sent her a list: integrating right side, hurts to put pressure, and resistance to touch/touching- as in my body parts touching each other.

In my current yoga practice I notice that my right side is shy. I know that part of this is living with a right hip suffering from osteoarthritis for over 10 years. My right side got tentative because it hurt, that whole side compensated for the pain in my hip. And my left side did too, it had to be strong and hold me up when my right hip would buckle.

Imagine the system working without me thinking about how to manage it.

Imagine my body having it's own life.

I saw an orthopedist who laughed and didn't take me seriously when I tearfully told him how important running was to me. I know what he saw: a 40 year old woman talking about running who was not in a magazine runner's body, but in my body. I could see his skepticism and I could tell he thought when I said running was important I meant losing weight was important. That I was trying to lose weight, get thinner.

He didn't understand that I meant running is important to me because it is how I catch my breath. It's how I get away from the whole world and my brain and become just me, just two feet, two legs, step after step after step. That running is the way I spend time in the woods, get surprised by beauty, feel like myself again. It is where what he saw that day disappears and I become me. Away from the gaze of the world, into the eyes of the trees.

He laughed because what he saw didn't match his idea of what being a runner is meant to be. And I went back to him 2 more times because I didn't know how to do anything different. I played along when he said I'd just have to deal until I was old enough for a hip replacement, just 35 more years. Oh, ummm. Okay if that's the way it is. ? I mean he's the doctor, and to him I'm just another not stereotypically fit looking person who wants my body to continue to be active so I can keep trying to be thin.. I should probably just not bother.

Luckily I found a new ortho, and she was immediately like, oh yeah, your right hip is fucked. Let's give you a cortisone shot and that will help manage the pain. Running is important, run as much as you want, wear that hip out, because you will definitely need it to be replaced. And when the cortisone shots stop working you can have it replaced. Not in 35 years, probably in 5.

And that's what I did, I ran and ran and my hip got worse and worse and when the cortisone shots stopped working after 7 years I found an awesome surgeon who replaced my right hip. And now I run regularly without any pain.

This connects to getting diagnosed because it is another time I didn't know there was a different story to be told. I heard the one story- too bad, suck it up and wait. It took me almost a year to find another ortho. To think something else might be true.

And how would I have known? What I thought at the time was hip replacements were only for old people, that I had fucked up my own body and now I was going to pay. It took so much time for me to figure out that the "traditional wisdom" was totally wrong.

Hip replacements are for any age person. My surgery was an ABM Sparing one, they don't even cut muscle. I was up and walking the day of my surgery. I was running a year after. Now it's been three years and I'm running regularly and just did pigeon pose comfortably for the first time ever in my yoga practice.

It really comes down to having both the subjective and objective perspective. Knowing and being known.

I did a yoga teacher training about 10 years ago and felt ashamed the whole time because of the size of my body. Ungainly next to everyone who was so thin. I couldn't do childs pose or squat comfortably because of my hip. I thought it was because my hip was just not cooperating, but it was because my hip joint was bone on bone with all these bone spurs jutting out making it more and more impossible for my hip joint to work the way it was meant to. Until I saw the x-ray that told me what was going on, I blamed myself.

My body became a thing when I realized that the way it looked was a way people decided about me. And my body expressed itself, with big gestures and hard tears, my voice said things that made people look surprised and I didn't understand why. Powerful and powerless, my body

My body. I can remember loving my body. I remember being tan from being at the beach when I was a little girl and I loved how tan I was and how white my butt was, like my body and I had our own sweet secret. I am trying to get back to that place- the place where my body is my home, and my home is safe.

Yesterday in my session with Kristen we talked about my right side and I know I'm making progress because I was able to get out of my chair and get on all fours in tabletop to demonstrate what I meant when I said it felt like my right side is shy. It is hard for me to express myself in front of other people, to be perceived, it feels ridiculous that it is such a big deal but it is such a big deal.

I sat back down in my chair and she asked me what my right side wanted to do. The gesture that came was my right shoulder in, and she said it made sense, I'm protecting my jugular. She waited, and then asked what else and as I pushed my right arm out in an arc, opening my shoulder wide a river of tears swelled in my middle and took me by surprise and I let her see.

I let me see.

For me, I think it's the push back that creates the sense of confidence and self esteem. It's the knowing that I was right about myself all along, that the world at large doesn't know me better than I know myself. Getting diagnosed meant I could run my life again- that my system could stop trying to assimilate and I could run free. It's like a big fat middle finger to the institutions that have told me over and over you are failing at life. Be cake!You are not doing this right.

And, they are right. I am not doing it right. I am not listening to the doctor who laughed in my face when I said how important running was to me. I'm listening to the one who said I see you, let's work with what you've got. Did I need to be diagnosed to have that? No. Did it help? Fuck yes. I am bread.

I think all the time about how my body has been left out of my life story. And how much I want her to be here, with me. In it. With me. I ignored her life, the system ignored me, and I hate that. I was that laughing in your face doctor to my own body, and I was enraged on her behalf.

Diagnosis is recognizing me, and merges us.

Listen to the Rebelling Podcast here