It's been a year of injuries, pain, also heartache, but mostly physical pain, and not knowing whether to give it rest or exercise. Just when in my early forties I felt like I finally understood my skin and my body, it's begun to change so unexpectedly and rapidly that it feels like it no longer speaks the language it taught me. And because of these injuries I have been unable to keep to a regular exercise regimen. As a result my weight has been growing, and its not new muscle mass for sure. 

Last October to this April, my right wrist first got incrementally weaker as I kept going on an unnamed ligament injury, and then took months of near disability and laser and ultrasonic therapy and small magical resistance exercises to heal. Then this July, suddenly finding myself on viciously biting red ants and their tiny blisters like hills and burrowings, I sprained possibly another ligament on the outer edge of my littlest toe on the left foot. I've been unable to run and swim, although as usual I kept doing those till I realised (doc said not to run or walk much; he wasnt a swimmer so misadvised that) they were preventing it from healing. And now waiting for it to heal, one good day I thought I could swim, and cos I was being easier on my feet I got the bright idea to push my arm pull in breaststroke. Now I'm nursing a swimmer's shoulder that again was ignored and has gotten worse. 

When I was younger, limb injuries healed within days. Or had a soreness that felt deliciously painful and slowly opened out to flexing them with the same exercises that had sored them out in the first place.

And then I took a painkiller pill, and it melted and evaporated the pain as if it never existed. Makes me feel like I cheated my memory of it, or like I'm cheating the living of this life.

something broke this last Sunday. maybe broke is the wrong word for it, because it felt like an unraveling, a dawning, that lasted more than the Sunday itself. in fact, it was on Monday that I fully realized it, and when I did it just was there, fully formed, waiting for me to see it. 

it was that I couldn't give her anything, that I had nothing she knew she wanted. that it had all been a mirage to me. and maybe she doesn't know what she wants, or maybe she does, but that that isn't mine and it never was. that eight years ago, when she had been curious about me, and I had shrugged it off, had been quite alright. and that it took me eight years to realize that my younger self had known better, in her bones. 

but Sunday was also strange, in that while my body was absorbing this epiphany, and while I was still unaware of it, those few hours with them felt very nice. very comfortable, old, and lived in. except when she was hurt by him pointing out her clumsy accident, and how I in reaction to that, served her, while displaying how easily I could be clumsy too right then, not looking at him almost as if punishing him for hurting her. and maybe also except when we just entered, and her face displayed the strain and awkwardness of my inviting ourselves over to their place (in a way).

I came away knowing more surely that he and I have known each other in other lives. but also that its okay that that is irrelevant in many ways. that it is enough that he knows and I know, even if every moment one or the other of us fears the other choosing to leave. choosing to leave, given the futility, given the heartache, given the possibility of hurting others. and the other moment one considers that oneself. 

on Sunday apparently no one said this aloud, but I heard it. someone saying to me that not every thought needs to be said aloud. but I sometimes wish we rather did, more often than not at least. 

when we were leaving, I went to my tote and gathered what was remaining from what I had got for them, and looked back at them. his eyes were on me, and I gestured to ask him what I should do with what was in my hand. I don't know if he said it aloud or I just read his lips, and I nodded mouthing okay. 

but then yesterday, I woke up in the middle of the night and it suddenly occurred to me that I might have left him feeling sad for me, for some of the things she said. even though I hadn't been sad, not for myself anyway.