Imagine you separated your left shoulder by tripping over your own feet in a frisbee tournament.
The year was 2015 and you were living in Korea.
You caught a toe on the turf while defending someone and tried to summersault through it so you wouldn’t go face-first into the ground but didn’t quite tuck enough and landed directly onto your left shoulder.
You immediately knew something was wrong and a Korean physio student on another team told you it was separated. So you popped a bunch of ibuprofen and coached your team from the sidelines for the rest of the tournament.
Eventually you caught the train home and got to bed.
Then a few hours later, you woke up because you felt as if someone were twisting a knife around in your shoulder.
Turns out injuries really suck when both adrenaline and ibuprofen wear off at the same time…
Over the next few weeks, it slowly got better – which is surprising because in 2015 rural Korea it was incredibly difficult to find an arm sling and the tiny children you taught didn’t seem to believe you when you told them your arm was injured so they continued to climb all over you.
But it did get better…
Just not completely better.
Ten years later, my shoulder’s still separated.
The left one sits an inch or so lower than the right one – I have a “step deformity” – and it’s a little loose, which means I have to be careful with it.
Yet it doesn’t really affect my life all that much.
I still climb.
I still run.
I still do mediocre versions of Olympic lifts like the snatch.
It’s fine.
But it’s definitely not perfect.
But I knew what was coming from day one.
Because after I woke up in searing pain, I called my dad on Skype.
(Remember Skype? How does a company screw up that badly? The fact that none of us even remember Skype when Zoom didn’t used to even exist is wild…)
He was a PT – a really good PT – and he both diagnosed me and set some expectations for how much “healing” would really be possible.
He told me it was going to heal a little funny and it would probably be a little unstable forever.
He said that it wouldn’t really affect my daily life. It probably would if I were a professional athlete, but seeing as that clearly wasn’t the case it wouldn’t be much of an issue.
He also told me it was going to hurt.
Often.
And probably a lot.
And that I should get a shoulder sling – which ended up being quite a quest and I had to use a t-shirt for a while.
As usual, he was right about all of it.
My shoulder works.
It’s a little unstable.
It hurts occasionally.
It doesn’t really affect my life.
It looks a little funny.
And personally, I’d call it “healed” – largely because it’s about as healed as I can ever expect it to get without a fairly invasive surgery and even more rehab.
When we’re looking at injuries, “healed” isn’t a check box.
It’s a spectrum.
When you damage your body – as most of us will throughout our lives – it may never really return to “factory settings.”
And it’s okay to be bummed about that.
But we should also know what to expect that from the start.
One of the worst things we can do when it comes to recovery is set expectations too high.
Because then everything below that is a failure.
Everything that isn’t complete repair means you’re broken.
Which isn’t true.
You aren’t broken.
You’re just a little damaged.
And that’s okay.
It’s a sign that you’ve lived life and done things and had experiences worth having.
(And maybe some not worth having.)
Damage is a natural effect of living your life.
On that frisbee field in 2015, I was broken.
My arm didn’t do arm things.
Now it’s just a little damaged.
It does all the arm things.
Just not perfectly.
I could say the same thing about my knee (chronic bursitis) or my hip (probable labral tear) or my ankles (sprains) or a couple of my fingers (dislocations).
We could also talk about all the breathing issues…
My body is far from its “factory settings.”
And yes, it doesn’t always feel great.
Yet I try to be appreciative for the cool shit I’m still able to do with it.
You may never fully “heal” from your injuries.
They may always hurt a bit or be a little out of place.
That doesn’t mean you’re broken and it sure as hell doesn’t mean you can’t do the things you love to do.
You might just have to be a little more careful.
And things might hurt occasionally.
And you might have to do some regular strength work to keep everything in check.