Over the years, I’ve chosen hobbies that aren’t particularly kind to my body.
Be it slamming my feet into the ground to make as loud a noise as possible while Irish Dancing, to clawing my way up jagged rock after a breakfast beer I’ve not made it easy for this meat sack to do it’s job.
As a result, it’s fought back and it’s surprisingly strong when it wants to be. We used to battle daily over whether I’ll continue to ignore the niggles or at least straighten my back and learn to sit properly, usually, my laziness won which as left me creaking.
I’ll start with the first I remember; a torn ligament and strained tendon in my right ankle (I think that’s what it was, but I was in middle school and now don’t remember the actual diagnosis) and it was the first time I had physiotherapy treatment. All I know is that they put some weird jelly on and whizzed over it with a metal ball thing attached to a machine. Fancy.
I don’t remember how I did it (you may notice a theme here) and I don’t remember a long or arduous recovery process. Every now and then it gets a bit tight, but overall, no biggy.
Next up is my left hamstring. Again, not sure how I initially damaged it, but I do know that I had 2 weeks to recover before the National Championships, with an opportunity to qualify for The Worlds (highly unlikley that I would qualify for worlds, I was well aware lol. I mention this only to express how 'important' this comp was in the yearly circuit.)
So, this one was slightly more memorable.
I loved competing. Feis days were always full of excitement… I got to wear a tonne of make up, hang around with all the other dancers; practising and feeling super fucking special, because we made it to Nationals or Great Britains or whatever, big comps, big deal! But it was scary because I was hurt and hiding it.
I’ve forgotten which of the first rounds it was, light or heavy, but I did the first front kick, and there it went. On stage, in front of everyone. I stopped and walked off, my teacher met me side stage and we had a chat which resulted in the decision that ‘the show must go on’ so off I trotted back in to stage, tears in my eyes and danced as well as I could.
I made recalls!
I danced the set and waited for the results.
15/15. Not bad…lets work towards Top 10 next year!
Then I stopped dancing.
life happened and time passed in retail and then bars, worked my way through a weak lower back and developed a lovely case of plantar fasciitis and very tight achillies from long shifts in bad shoes, supplemented by heels too high for my own good on longer nights out. This one’s still a bugger in the morning.
I found dancing again at some point, this time it was Lindy Hop and it was a little softer on the joints. A lot smoother than what I was used to, til you hit the Charleston that is, so except for that one time I re-tore my hamstring doing the splits at a party, during what could probably only be described to non-dancers as a dance off (yes they are real hahah) I stayed relatively unhurt during my stint into vintage…
Moving the story forward into my climbing and yoga years, feels like it requires a whole post of it’s own, so I’ll save that til next time and hope you look after your own meat sacks better than I have in the past <3