This post is a follow-up on Part 2: No more travelling? A house? A job?, while the story started after getting a diagnose in Beijing, China.
The post below is an edit of a story I wrote 2 years ago, recovering from an unexpected life twist and full of raw emotions. In a few weeks I'll write my more optimistic (but still honest) posts as life went on and I learned to live with limited mobility :-)

Part 3: Having a body, loving your body

If you’ve made it this far in my story you might be ready to get an even more personal answer. Because, in all honesty, at this moment I’m not on good terms with my own body. That’s not an easy thing to say out loud. But I’m really not liking my body right now.

Since I can remember, I have physical challenges. I’ve tried to write down a list, per year, starting at the age of 14, of stuff that caused me pain somewhere in my body. I can’t even recall my own history. What I do know is I certainly can’t remember a year in which I did not experience any major pains. A few items on the list are:

• Foot pains during my teenage years which caused me to get bad grades at school gym.
• Lower back pains which led to wearing a corset in order to be able to make my exams or, later in life, not being able to work more than three days behind a desk.
• Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome (cartilage pain in the knee), which took about a year to revalidate from, but never completely healed.
• Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction (a problem with the pelvis), while not even being pregnant. This one I perceived as worse than pain. It feels like your never standing up straight, even though you stand up perfectly straight.
• Severe daily head aches for more than a year which made me decide to quit my full-time job.

So it’s a different source of pain every year, and that means dealing with something anew every year. You try to figure out what’s wrong, find the right therapist to help you get better, and if it won’t get better, make a life change in one way or the other.

But after about 15 years of falling down, getting up and ‘going on’, I’m a bit tired. After solving the previous ‘big issue’, the year long headaches, I actually thought I was ‘finished’ for a while. I did physical therapy, went to a trusted osteopath, got less and less headaches, and even found a new therapist who learned me to walk straight again. This felt like a ‘reset’, a perfect starting point for a big adventure. “Right now”, I told myself, “I’m strong and ready to go pain-free on a journey of a lifetime, with nothing to hold me back. And deservedly so.” But here I am, temporarily living in a house that’s not mine, writing down a blog about the thing that’s keeping me from living my life. Again.

So, how do I feel? Disappointed that again I’m being called back to work on my body and not living the life that I chose to live.

All pictures on steemit.com/@soyrosa are created and edited by me, Rosanne Dubbeld, 2001-2018. Contact me if you want to discuss licensing or collaborations on creative projects :-)