Back on the Wall
Yesterday I went back to the climbing wall after two months of inactivity. That's how long it took me to recover enough from my injury that I felt comfortable moving again, and I spent all this time unable to do anything. I felt pain any time I bent my knee, that is, whenever I sat up or down, walk the stairs, sat for too long, walked too fast. Every time I felt ready to push myself a bit and do some more intense activity I would quickly regret it, and have to spend the next few days being even more careful. All the while I was yearning for the climb, which felt quite novel: I had never found a sport I enjoyed, let alone missed. And so yesterday I felt as I was flying all the way to the gym, and putting the equipment on was like coming back home. I had bought a knee pad, more for psychological safety than anything else, as it turned out to be quite uncomfortable. Obviously, I started with my favourite route.
It was rough.
Two months of inactivity were enough to completely destroy a year of training. It had taken me so long to get to an acceptable level of fitness after years of struggling with long COVID, and here I am, back to the fucking start. Even worse, I was afraid. Again.
The fear of height is a pretty normal thing when climbing, even if you normally don't experience it. It's one thing to be on a high terrace with a railing, quite another to hand from a straight wall from your literal fingertips. Most climbers have to grow past it, no matter how much they yearn for the challenge. I had fought that fear very hard, as being afraid of trying my best is not who I normally am, and here I was again, stuck on the wall and unable to take a doable step because of the fear of falling, as well as the pain in my already tired arms. When I left the gym, all I had accomplished was two runs of my beloved 10 m purple route and the first 3 m of a 15 m route that was supposed to be my project for the season. I won't lie, it felt pretty disappointing even if I knew I was doing what was best for my body in that moment.
But then I thought about it more and realised that this sport is all about starting over. You climb, you fall, you have to climb back and try again. If you keep failing a step, you still have to try it over and over until you manage, because there's no way around it. And when you finally make it to the top... you get back down and start again. I had never thought about it this way, but unless you're mountaneering, you have to get back down to the ground in order to climb again. In a sense, you're always starting over.
I can't control my feelings of disappointment and frustrations, but I can accept that starting over is part of the game. You know what, perhaps we should just normalize the concept of starting over. It's not a failure, if the journey is the destination.