I’ve been feeling old and badly damaged for quite a while now.  I have plantar fasciitis in my left foot.  When I wake up in the morning, my first steps feel like someone took a hammer to the sole while I was sleeping.  Running, walking, and standing all make it worse.  My foot is, for all practical purposes, permanently and badly bruised.

My right knee is only slightly better.  Some days are worse than others, but I can never cross my legs, sit Indian-style, or use a footstool without feeling it burn and hyperextend.  My hip feels like there’s broken glass between the head of my femur and the socket of my pelvis.  My right shoulder feels to be partially dislocated again.

Needless to say, I haven’t been going to the gym or running much recently.

I don’t list all of these problems simply to complain, but because I finally watched The Dark Knight Rises today.  In it, Bruce Wayne starts as a decrepit, battered old man, hobbling around with a cane.  I’ve actually considered getting a cane several times, when the pain has been at its worst.  A close friend of mine has one.  We’d look good limping down the street together.  I’ve never done it mostly out of pride, but also because I think people would think I’m intentionally being dramatic.

Not too long after, Bruce, with the help of some technology, gets back on his feet.  And not just because he’s the goddamn Batman–it’s because he worked at it.  He stopped accepting that pain was normal, and that he wasn’t going to get better.  I saw myself in him, and realized that I, too, had accepted I wasn’t going to get better.  I’d given up on ever running a marathon, or getting my black belt, or learning parkour, because without being consciously aware of it I had quietly accepted my body was too old and frail to take it.

I walked out of that movie angry with myself  and my body.  I’m thirty-one years old.  That’s far too young to be damaged beyond repair.  Tomorrow, I’m calling my doctor, a sports doctor, and my podiatrist, and I’m going to make myself get better even if it requires surgery.

I’m done being broken.