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.

  • zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    Give yourself time and permission to mourn what you’ve lost, all of what you’ve lost, including what you’re capable of doing, your plans, your sense of self and safety/infallibility, and whatever else. Mourning looks different for everybody, but feel free to take cues from your culture’s public rituals around it, e.g. funerals, mourning periods, etc.

    After that, you might want to look at what about all those things was important to you and see if there’s anything else that can provide those things, e.g. if it’s the travel that was important, find a different way to travel.