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10:45pm June 1, 2015

clatterbane:

A little while ago, I tripped and fell over in the hall, right in front of Mr. C. Leaving his office room where he was sitting, actually.

So I was a little stunned, and I was trying to figure out the best way to get up with the miraculously unbroken phone still in one hand.

Then he rushes over, looking panic stricken, with a “Stay right there!”…and tries to grab at the frozen shoulder arm to hoist my carcass up out of the floor. *facepalm*

I barked at him not to touch the arm, but if he would take the phone I would get myself up. Felt kind of bad immediately about getting that sharp, but it got his attention before he did something really painful.

Now, I have always had kind of ridiculous large motor coordination, and have been prone to falling over a lot. He’s seen me clumsy around enough over the years.

But, I’m not used to being decrepit enough that people who care about me actually panic and are afraid I might have hurt myself to the point that I can’t get myself up again. :-| Just from a normal-for-me tripping episode.

(ETA: This is also someone who tries pretty hard to stay Mr. Calm Cool and Collected…)

That whole incident was kind of embarrassing, “holy shit what kind of shape have I gotten into?!” sobering, and darkly funny at the same time.

I totally relate to that last sentence.  I was meaning to write something about how my recent fall has brought home that I’m approaching middle age in about five years, with everything that means for my body.  I’m not young anymore, I can’t climb on everything and expect not to fall, I can’t trust my body to run along the tops of fences effortlessly, and it’s weird as hell.  My body is also a lot more breakable than it used to be.  These are normal parts of aging (and yes doctors and nurses now routinely refer to me as “aging”, I’m not even 35 yet for a couple months, but they talk to me about “this is just what happens as your body ages” and “it’s part of getting older” and encroaching middle age and shit).  O

f course to me, the fact that I’m aging at all feels like a victory, because I didn’t expect to live this long, without getting diagnosed  with adrenal insufficiency I would not have lived this long, period.  Every grey hair and wrinkle feels like  a triumph, a sign I’ve lived when I wasn’t supposed to live, and in some ways I want to get to be old and grey just because I can, at least potentially, if I live that long, nobody knows how long they’ll live – nobody.,

But it’s still a weird feeling to realize my body is now falling apart in ways that are actually pretty conventional for aging – and that I’ve gotten past the “body is growing and gearing up for life and relatively limber and durable compared to later in life” phase and am now defiintely heading into the “body is stiffening up and beginning to fall apart in ways that all bodies start falling apart around your mid-thirties,not just ways related to medical conditions” territory.  And it’s forcing reconsideration of a lot of the way I do things on a purely physical level, even though I’m actually getting healthier and heallhier when it comes to the adrenal insufficiency, I’m also getting older and older and that comes with its own set of problems even without deteriorating health.