When I was ten, I had a bad skiing accident that left me with a spiral fracture in one tibia and three months in a solid plaster cast while it healed.
On the surface of it, it healed fine.
But when it gets cold out, the spot on my shin aches, and there's not much you can do to alleviate it.
There's some scientific reason for this, which I've read about, but can't recall. The point is, the body remembers every trauma, even if it doesn't always show its hand.
Our culture is so obsessed with "curing" trauma, whether PTSD or physical pain. I also have four enormous screws holding my body together, and again, while mostly, I can function normally, occasionally the muscles attached cramp up and some $400 gizmo I bought after surgery that intensely massages and releases the muscles is worth its weight in gold.
I think we kid ourselves that all things can be overcome. Managed, at least most of the time: perhaps. But we are impaired in some permanent and life-altering way, and there's no shame in that.
We label everything "mental illness" now if it doesn't fit in with some bucolic life vision. What complete bullshit. You can be completely sane and still hurt beyond repair, mentally, emotionally or physically.
To all my fellow survivors of surgeons' knives and accidents and bones fused back together: namaste.
Stay warm. 'Tis the season to be melancholy.
