The weather is hardly frightful at all. The sun is shining. The temperature is hovering just barely below zero degrees and nary a snowflake in sight; hard to believe that this is Christmas Eve! Surely this unseasonably mild weather is creating some sort of disruption to my Christmas spirit. Oh yes, I am ready for Christmas. The tree is decorated, and the gifts are wrapped and laid out beneath the branches. All the groceries have been picked up and I have checked my lists more than twice, so I don't think I have forgotten anything. The turkey is now sitting in it's brine for the next twenty-four hours or so, and I have prepped all the various veggies I will need between tonight and tomorrow. Pumpkin pies are cooling on the counter. Everything is as ready as can be, and so am I.
I am ready for Christmas but not necessarily feeling very Christmasy yet. Perhaps this is why How the Grinch Stole Christmas is one of my most favourite holiday stories...because I most definitely understand the Grinch with his disconnect from people and his dislike of commercialized Christmas. But I also understand the Whos with their love for food, music, celebrating, and each other. Almost every Christmas season is begun with me feeling as if my heart was two sizes too small. The consumerist mindset is always at odds with my spirit, but the holiday season pushes the buy! spend! message into a frenzy. What should be a time of love, joy, and peace is often reduced to fits of road rage, angry tirades from short-tempered customers, grumblings over reduced hours and limited availability of product. People just aren't happy, and they love nothing more than to share their misery with everyone. I love Christmas! I love the lights, the tree and decorations, the food, the time with friends and family, the carols and advent messages at church, the message of hope and love come down and peace on earth. I love it all, but, like a sponge, I absorb what is around me and one cannot avoid all the nastiness outside. Like the Grinch, my own heart will soon feel as if it has grown three sizes as I spend time with friends this afternoon, take in the Christmas eve service, and spend time with family tonight and tomorrow. Christmas doesn't come from a store, after all.
There is something else weighing on me, although it has no bearing on Christmas at all. I experienced a minor injury at the gym last Monday, and the timing of that is not great. One of my goals was to finish off the year with new, all-time personal bests for squat and deadlift. At my last competition in May, I was only 5 pounds away from equalling my best lifts before I herniated a disc more than six years ago, so this goal was very realistic and important to me. This goal is what my coach has had me working towards for the past few months, and I have had several little gym PRs along the way, including last Monday. The day for testing myself is on the 29th, less than a week away now. When this new injury occurred, I instantly felt as if my goals had suddenly fallen apart all around me, not just my goals to lift more than anytime before but also my hopes of competing in March either at Provincials or Westerns.
My coach doesn't seem too worried. My chiropractor made a point, a very intentional and meaningful point, to say that this is not the same as the back injury and told me that the only thing I couldn't do was to do nothing. I was told that it might suck for a while, and it definitely does. It feels not so bad when I'm doing my rehab exercises and moving about, but it kind of seizes up and resists movement after I have been sitting for a while. This morning was my first time squatting with a regular barbell since the injury, and it was rather uncomfortable. Definitely uncomfortable but it was tolerable and I was able to complete all of my programmed squats. Bench press is only slightly uncomfortable; the best feeling out of all the main three lifts. Deadlifts, which is where the injury occurred, were slightly less painful than squats, but there was a great deal more discomfort at the end range of the lift where the injury occurred. This discomfort and inability to properly finish the lift grew worse as the weight on the bar got heavier, and I didn't even bother attempting my last single rep. I messaged my coach to say that I didn't think that deadlifts were going to be possible on test day. His response was to say that there is still lots of healing time between now and test day, to maintain the attitude that they will be possible and wait to see how warmups feel. He's right! There is still time, and I am doing the rehab stuff and I'm still putting in the work. I am fairly confident that I can pick up the planned deadlift weight for Friday...just not confident that I can finish the lift in a way that would pass in competition. But I will forge ahead through these next few days believing that I can and will, even if I still feel as if I am picking up the pieces of my goals from the floor.
And just like that I now have clarity as to why I am feeling so blah! All of what I have already written is true, but the Grinchy attitude is something I am very familiar and comfortable with and so not actually the source of my discontent. It is the shoulder injury, although even that is mostly a scapegoat. The injury has my attention focused on December 29th, imaging what could be my successes and what may be my failures. The injury has placed a giant countdown clock inside my brain, one ticking so loudly I cannot ignore it. The root of my blah is that I am not present in this moment but rather stuck in the vicious cycle of what if that is centred on one date several days from now. It feels as if I am ending the year with disappointment and uncertainty. I have no clarity on what my theme or goals for 2024 will be, because I am unable to look past the 29th. Sigh.
Soon we will be heading out to visit with friends before we go to the Christmas eve service. My heart will begin growing very soon. I will enjoy today, tonight and tomorrow. I will enjoy every part: the food, the gifts, the people I am surrounded by, the texts and messages, the music, the sense of joy and peace. I will be present in each moment and let tomorrow worry about itself.
Merry Christmas!
No comments:
Post a Comment