Pep talk

The sole reason for this post is probably that I need a pep talk. From me to me. So feel free to abandon ship on this one.

I don't know at what point it happened, but I stopped caring. About my body ... about keeping it in good enough shape to serve me well into my advanced years.

And then this thing with my hip happened. I have no idea if it's a result of my apathy, but it's there, and it's not going away. No one seems to know or agree on what's wrong and, while that's frustrating as hell, one good thing has come from it: It's gotten my lazy ass to the doctor and to the physical therapist. Where one thing has become abundantly clear: I'm worse off than I thought.

My body might as well belong to someone 20 years older than me. 

I could make a lot of excuses. Back-to-back knee surgeries. Two pregnancies —one complicated — and two c-sections followed by the raising of the kind of kids I tend to have — the GIGANTIC kind. And there would be some validity to those excuses. But mostly, I just gave up trying to make a comeback from those things. I guess I thought if I wasn't getting fat, I wasn't that bad off.

Truth is, there are people who are much larger than me who are in much better shape. They might not be able to wear a single-digit size (to which I'm clinging with the tips of my fingernails), but they can run and bike and swim and touch their toes and they don't need an extended recovery period afterward.

And now there's this hip. And it's not getting better. And no one has figured out a treatment plan to make it get better yet. And so, beyond going to PT and doing everything they tell me to do and then some, I can't forge some massive comeback plan and emerge triumphantly from that with a new stronger, fitter me.

In its own way, that fact — that I'm not able to go all Sylvester Stallone Rocky-style on my own ass — is its own blessing. For two reasons:

1. If I could just start chipping away at this problem with a some big, grandiose strategy for Operation Make Kris Strong Again, chances are I would do it, probably half-heartedly, get semi-successful results, and then go about my business. And maybe go right back to being a shiftless shit.

But the fact that I can't is making me consider — and I mean really consider — why I let it get to this point. I can't physically dive into anything, so I'm having to do the same thing mentally and emotionally.

Jerry tells the boys that their mom is the toughest woman they'll ever meet. While that might have some truth to it in terms of my just plain stubborn resolve to not let life take a baseball bat to my heart, it does not, in any way, apply physically.

And his insistence to them that this is true about their mom makes me feel somewhat like a fraud. 

So, why did I give up? Why did I let my inner bad-ass fade away?

I don't know the answers yet, but I'm hoping that by not being able to hit the pavement or the court or the pool or the gym, I might be able to figure them out.

I can't pretend, and so I have to be real with myself. 

And ...

2. If there is one thing that has been true of me damn near my whole life, it's that I don't perform nearly as well without a huge mountain looming in front of me. Tell me I can't do it and I'll prove to you that I can and I will. Give me a challenge and I'll rise to it, and I will tell that challenge to fuck right on off the whole time I'm overcoming it.

And so, that stubborn resolve I mentioned a minute ago, yeah ... it's there. I've been wanting to lose 20 lbs. for, oh, about 20 years now. I realize that 20 lbs. is not 150 lbs. and that makes it even more pathetic that I haven't been able to do it.

But now I'm betting I can. Because if I were anyone else looking at me right now — the sad lazy gimp who can barely even touch her toes — I'd bet against her.

And of course it's about much more than losing the weight. I could blather on about how I want to return to my former physically strong inner bad-ass, but I did that last year after my friend Karen died, and I've proven, in a very embarrassing way, that I was not up to the task. I'm not better than I was a year ago — I'm worse.

And let's be honest, that formerly strong inner bad-ass never really existed anyway. Maybe for a brief moment in time she was there, but mostly she was too busy ordering cocktails and being concerned with making people laugh and deflecting any attention away from her insecurities.

And so there's today. And today I think I can do it. Today I'm betting on that gimp, because I know her better than anyone else on Earth and, hip be damned, I thinks she's gonna rock this motherfucker.