It's like this, my best friend grew up in Denver, CO. I grew up in Duluth, MN. She and I met in college and at some point we began talking about the dating app 'Tinder', but every time she mentioned it I thought she was saying tender, like chicken tender. She never knew that she said it 'differently.' That's how my relationship with my body is. Somewhere along the line things got so bad, I didn't know it was different. I didn't really realize that at 23, it shouldn't be a question of when your hips or knees give out, but if; I shouldn't have to decide that I can't work out - if I'm not going to the gym it should at least be because I didn't want to. I didn't notice that my hip dropped too low when I walked or that, that was what was causing the knife in the back feeling no one around me seemed to have. I shouldn't have had to pretend that I bought 'crappy' seats on the balcony level of a concert because they were cheaper when really it was so I could sit down when I needed to because standing for a whole show meant laying in bed for the entirety of the next day and I didn't have time for that. I shouldn't have gotten that sick on graduation day, getting sick shouldn't mean my joints feel like they've been cemented in one position or the other.
Before my senior year of high school this wasn't the girl I was. I wasn't living a scandalous, wild teenage existence by any means but I was living. And then I woke up one morning and my elbow didn't straighten. And then came the pain, my right ankle - but I had just been in a cast there, that was fine. My knees - they'd been bad forever, dance ruined those bad boys by age 15. The fatigue, the weight gain, the realization I simply couldn't do the senior solo for my team showcase I'd been waiting four years for. The pretending everything was normal even when I ended up on crutches four times that year. It was stress, it was anxiety - getting ready for college. It would pass... right?
I moved out of state for college, I had always planned on this but after my senior year (more on this nightmare at a later date) the move felt more like loading up the getaway car than I'd hoped. It was within the first few weeks that I noticed my other arm stopped straightening. How stiff my knees and hips felt when I woke up, how as the weather cooled down the more often I sobbed on the 2 minute walk from my dorm to my classes. How I stopped being able to walk down the stairs like everyone else - my knees didn't bend enough so it was one step at a time for me, literally. My winter break was spent at the Dr., I think I had a blood draw once or twice a week all of January. Nothing came back. They went looking for zebra's and still - nothing. But I had arthritis in my family so we slapped a label on it and they handed my 18-year-old self a bottle of pills with the sage wisdom of avoiding getting pregnant due to some... extreme complications. I went to the car and sobbed. My freshman year came, and went - I considered dropping out. I considered transferring to Arizona or wherever the grandparents with arthritis go in the winter - anything to make the pain stop. Slowly it did, enough to get off the scary mutant baby making meds in my junior year, enough to salvage a semblance of the college experience, to meet my best friend, to move to New York for a summer and even briefly live my dream life. And then senior year was over and suddenly I was back at the beginning. Another million tests, a new bottle of meds, a move back to Minnesota that I didn't plan on... my life, at 22, didn't exactly hit the marks I had planned on. But I was maybe getting better. I had to get better. Fast forward through a painful first year in a 'grown up' job, a few more major flareups and a good dose of therapy, I'm about to turn 24. I've been on this ride since I was 17. Saying that alone makes me want to cry - but I know deep in my soul that a) this was my path to a different career, to the incredible friends I've kept and added to my life, and to reconnecting with myself and b) that there are other people out there who are truly trying to survive their 20's, whether that's trying to find your friends outside of the dorms, navigating career and love life, or literally trying to survive like I was for the last few years, day by day, step by step.
Bent Out of Shape is my first step into the light, first step on the mend and I want to share it with the people who've been there the whole time, and the people who, like me, need some hope. So, here it is. My hurting body doesn't hurt so much any more, and I'm beginning my search for something real.
Here's to making it to 30.... we're going to do our best.
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