Doubt with Ankles Torn Assunder

Last night I was about 25 minutes into my 30 minute workout, in between reps of a certain squat exercise and I was feeling pretty pumped up and proud of myself because I was really rocking out. I’m getting into shape and it feels good. I was savoring my 10 second break between reps. What I usually do during that 10 seconds is try to stay moving, stretching and walking around in the little circle of my living room. So I was doing just that (walking in a circle) and taking a quick drink of water when my ankle gave right out on me and down I went like a ton of bricks, collapsed on the floor and gasping as the reality of the pain started to settle in. It crunched when it happened, so I knew it had to be pretty bad. This has happened to me quite a few times before, so my pride wasn’t so damaged as my ability to continue my work out. The girl on the screen kept trying to coax me back in to moving. “Let’s get moving!” she kept saying, but alas, I could not. Luckily, when I screamed as I went down, my lovely husband came “a’runnin to my rescue.” He brought me an ice pack and helped me upstairs to the bath tub. The funny part is that I remembered having sprained my ankle right before one of my solo trips to NC a few years back and that I had a really kickin’ ankle brace. The brace is foam rubber with stretchy, Velcro straps. It made the long drives to and from not so painful. However, the thoughts of those trips did bring me a pang of fear in my belly. And the pang led to a string of thoughts…

I’m someone who is very in touch with her emotions, be it joy, fear, sadness, depression, etc. I am incapable of hiding my emotions, and believe me I’ve tried. I’m also someone who has always been very emotionally connected to the places that I have been, whether for short or long periods of time. I believe that I’m connected to the earth, so to speak. I have always been that way and always will be. Every time I think about the possibility of living really far away from this end of the country (for example, in Utah), I get one, right smack in the gut. The thought of being so far away that I can’t drive to one particular place (including the people in those places) that I’m connected to (be it in WV, NC, KY, MO or TN) within a day or a half day’s time bothers me. What specifically bothers me is how much I still really want to live in North Carolina. Even now with our new priority of living close to family (and I do really want this), I can still feel how bad I want it and how frustrating it is to possibly be physically moving in the opposite direction. I had to escort a candidate around a little this morning and she and her husband and baby currently live in Durham (she’s at Duke, poor girl) but they are moving to be closer to family. So I know that we aren’t the only one’s preparing to start over in a new place to be near family. I’m sure that wherever we go, it won’t be forever and that I’ll get to live where my soul flies eventually. And please don’t get me wrong, I realize how menial and silly this all is. Home is where you make it, so long as your loved ones are there. Amen.

The point is that sometimes in life we have to do hard things that have the potential of being more magical than we could ever imagine. Not living in NC and my intense fear of heights are my two big brain hurdles at the moment. I’m almost ready to jump them and move on to whatever is next. But I’d better let my ankle heal up first.

Have a nice weekend. Go make some cookies.

Molly