It looks like I’ve injured myself in a way that will not heal. This is partially due to age, and partially due to my own overconfidence and refusing to accept that I’m not a teenager anymore. Long story short, I used to be able to ride long distances on my bicycle, and now I can’t do that anymore.
I had big plans to go on long bicycle tours and basically live off my bike for weeks at a time. With this new limitation, it’s very unlikely that I will ever be able to do that. I was just getting started on the pathway to fulfilling a lifelong dream, and now I’m faced with this hard reality; I will never get to do what I’ve wanted to do since I was a child. People age. We can’t help that, but we can help getting old. I feel like I let myself get old. I feel like I fucked up, because I did. The injury was easily avoidable, and was totally my fault. Now I’m blaming myself.
I can still ride my bike, just not very far. I’ve spent the past year trying to push through this new limitation, and now I’m seeing that’s not going to happen.
I know I’ll eventually find a bright side to this. Maybe it’ll cause me to have some experience I wouldn’t have had otherwise? Maybe I’ll figure out a compromise of some kind? I’ve been fortunate enough to have been healthy my whole life, so this is all new for me. I suppose I should have expected it eventually, but now here it is, and I’m not ready. I’d like to hear about how others have learned to accept a sudden limitation in their life.