i cry a lot

the first thing i would like to say is that im blown away by the level of interest my blog has created. if im honest i thought that maybe about 20 people (all of who would know me) would be a good number of people to read this and that really cataloging my injuries may be a bit of a waste of time. well its safe to say ive been proved massively wrong. it seems people from all over the world have read this and that i can become a warning to other young climbers about the risks of injuries and the importance of listening to your body. so please any climbers out there who have a niggle or a twing treat it carefully and do the right thing! i beg you.

so that over and done with and with a slightly new perspective on what i want to achieve with this blog i'll move on to my next post (ill try to make it a bit shorter than the last!) as you can see from the title its not all that a cheery subject. i want to talk about the emotional side of what its like to be injured for a climbing obsessed teen. some people may feel i'm over the top that i should be more reasonable and just deal with it and to those people i will say to you that everyone is different and we all react in different ways to bad things. also the way we react depends heavily upon the circumstances in other parts of our lives. if you want to judge me on what i say then go for it but i reacted the way i did and i'm not ashamed of it either.

 im not going to go through my injuries like last time and talk about them one by one i reckon i can get the point across much better in a different way. but what i will tell you is this. time is the most important thing to give to injuries if you want to heal properly and it is also the hardest thing of all to give. it can seem like an eternity as i know it has done for me even in the short time spans. when i hurt my finger for the first time 6 weeks was all i needed and yet it felt like the end of the world. but compared to where i am now 10 months into an injury i know will most likely take at least another 8 months 6 weeks is nothing. anyone who has had short term injuries will feel bad they are most likely to get upset as i have done many times. when i hurt my fingers and then went to watch a competition i cried when i saw my friends climb. why? because i wanted to climb as well and even though i knew in the not to distant future i would climb again my emotions got the better of me and i ended up in tears.

so for anyone who is right now suffering from a short term climbing injury i will tell you this. please dont be ashamed of feeling emotional if you do feel that way but know it will get better and know that you will get back on the wall/rock again soon and as long as you take care all will be good. i learnt this and yes i may have cried but hey im a teenage girl who cries a lot so its not really that surprising.

i now want to move on to what will be the hardest thing i think ive ever tried to write about. i want to try to talk about long term injuries and how they have made me feel emotionally. the physical side i find is a lot easier to deal with. things hurt so you adapt and change so as to accommodate them and try to reduce pain. thats far and away the easy part. what is not so easy is to find a way to cope with the feeling and emotion that flood over me at different times and i think that it may be the case that only people who have had long term injuries will completely understand it all. but i will try to make it so that when people read this (especially young climbers) they can see how bad it can be and my hurt can be used as a warning to them. dont let it get this far. listen to your body and if it hurts stop!

climbing was everything and without it i dont know who i am. i am a climber. its that simple. it feels like there is a massive hole im my life. this biggest thing i lived for is gone and now a gaping big hole has been cut right through me. i feel like a hollow shell. all the good things that i loved about my life have leaked out from my feet and left the body that is me in a rather robotic like state. i function and go about the list of instructions that are my daliy life with out much thought most days and only i can see the scars that have been left behind. the circuitry that is my head got a bit messed up as my life blood drained from me and now those impulses that move my arms,neck and upper back dont work as well as they should. but i still muddle my way through life on the out side at least almost as normal.

on the inside though im falling apart. its a rather well known fact that sporty people who get injured or have to stop for what ever reason for a longish length of time get quite down and can become depressed and well i reckon that pretty true of me. its incredibly hard to describe the emotion i feel towards climbing. i miss it so much that it hurts way more then my arms ever will and sometimes it can become too much. when this happens i just stop completely. on those days i can just sit and do nothing at all. even at school. people have become used to seeing me just do nothing and it can last whole weeks. sometimes even the smallest thing such as being told to copy down work in class can make me cry. not because its hard or i dont want to do it but more because im so not with it im so far away and so not in the right mind that i simply can not comprehend why it matters when really all i want to do is climb. these moods can be very destructive and i do all i can to avoid them. but its very hard to do this all of the time and sometimes i just let go.

one of the places i find hardest to be are climbing centres especially when my friends are competing and i am watching. i have often been asked why i put myself through the day at these events. well the simple answer is that all my friends are climbers pretty much and i want to see them and i want to be there and i just can not separate myself from climbing. i just cant. ratho (in scotland) has come to hold a bit of a strange place in my heart. i think now i have been there more times to watch other than climb myself and pretty much every time ive been there i have cried. sometimes its on waking in and seeing my friends on the wall. i will just burst into tears and cry till i feel better. other times i only start when someone askes me if im ok. ill give you a recent example:

BLCC ratho 2012. i havent climbed for 8 months. i managed the hellos how are yous good to see yous and all the rest ok. i got though the demos and stuff without much problem and had been there about 2 hours. it was starting to get to me but i was coping. i told myself it would be ok that i could mange and that i would get back to climbing i just had to weight. i was keeping hold of things ok. that was until robbie (phillips) came to talk to me. (ive got to know him through nat (berry) who is helping me with a school project about climbing) he asked me how i was. i told him i was fine and promptly burst into tears. to this he asked if i was sure. yes i said i was (ok maybe not its hard to convince someone you're ok when crying your eyes out. somehow) i couldnt explain how i felt at that point. i missed climbing so much i cant put it into words ( if that kinda explains it) it took me about 2 hours to stop crying completely. people kept asking if i was ok and i kept bursting into tears. (so please anyone who knows me if it looks like ive been crying DO NOT ask if im ok cause youll set me off again) but thats how things are now when i see climbing i want to climb.

then comes this past weekend. i was in liverpool to watch the BMC  open youth. (i noticed there was lots of talk about injuries and responsibility towards young climbers) apart from a small slip i got to mid day before it got too bad. but i couldnt make the okness last. i ended up curled up on the floor crying for about 2 hours. (i know this sounds like a very long time but i was having some difficult conversations) most people told me the stuff i already knew. it would get better and i would get back to it again. i just had to wait it out. there was also a moment of mild relief when i was told by another young climber who had been out for a year due to injury that she also has cried alot for seemingly no reason. most of the time when people try to tell me they know how it feels i appreciate the fact they are trying to help and cheer me up but at the same time i know they dont. in this case though i knew she did and that made me feel a little better. but what i brought away from me after those long 2 hours is that it doesn't make sense to sit for too long with your feet pressed against your legs as they get really stiff and that no matter what I AM A CLIMBER and that will not be taken from me i wont let it. i can get though whatever hurt because i want to get to the other side so badly i will find a way of getting there.

to tell you the truth i am very scared. what if i dont get better? what if i can never climb again? these things i try not to think about because when i do the world might as well have stopped. i dont know how i would cope if i could not climb at all for the rest of my life. most of the time i dont even go here because its so big and its so scary i just cant. i dont have the words to describe how this feels so that will have to do. its too big to comprehend. but i thought i should mention it. please dont hurt your body so much that this is a possibility.

so thats the main 2 raw emotions that i feel a lot at the moment. most of the time i put a face on. i go about my robotic life and manage ok just about. there are things i enjoy (slacklining, seeing my friends and when i can remove myself from it watching others climb i loved watching the world cups this year and i even got my tech teacher watching the womens qualification (bouldering) for the world championships) but sometimes the emotions i have just decide to hit me like a train. they are so big and so powerful they just take over. often when this happens at home i curl up on my bed and cry. i then talk myself through it (something i have been good at from a young age) i get back to robot me and make it look like nothing has happened. 

the conversation with myself often goes a bit like this:
me:come on kiddy, you can get through this you just have to be strong!
me:but what if they dont get better what if i dont recover?
me you WILL  get better and come out the other side it just takes time ok?
me: i dont want to give it time. f**k the rest of my life i want to climb now! i dont care if i screw it up forever just let me climb.
me: you're being stupid. ok giving it time is bloody hard but you CAN get through this and when you do you will be stronger because of it.
me: sod that.
me: look theres not point getting this wound up. you have your whole life ahead of you you're only young kiddo. you know you're doing the right thing and it wont last forever. pull yourself together and just get on with the things that are happening now. you cant change whats happened to you just have to get  through this. alright kid?
me:ok, i suppose you're right, but i WILL climb again and i will climb good things and climb hard and be the best i can be.
me:exactly this is just a small hicup really it will get better and you can do anything you set your mind to. take this as an opportunity to become a better climber when you get back to it kid. there is so much you can learn but you just have to wait.
me: ok i can do this and i will do this. (sigh) wipe away tears smile a little.

(right just to clarify i do seem to be in the habit of treating myself as a child. bit odd but hey im ok with it. i also have firm belief that i will climb hard (ambition is climb 8a out doors at some point) and well im stubborn as hell so ill get through it.)

now i may not be doing a great job at keeping this short but these are a few more small things that I have to talk about.

only a faint mark of where my calouse used to be :'(

ill start with my hands. now climbers have callouses. fact. and well i kinda liked mine. they meant i could never forget climbing. to me it was like  a symbol of who i was. they were an intrinsic part of me those callouses. small things can make a big difference. now 10 months since i last went on a climbing wall i will sometimes look at my hands. those callouses are gone. the first time for 8 years they have not been there. a part of me that has been constant for almost half my life has left and now only a faint scar is left behind. but i must admit they have taken rather a long time to go completely much to my surprise and even now the skin where they used to be is slightly rougher than on the rest of my hands. for someone who was almost proud of the dead skin lumps that formed a small mountain range on my fingers and palm this is a small thing that i miss alot. (ok i may be a bit odd in this respect but like i have said before im happy as me)

climbing shoes! that actually fit. shame i dont get to ware them these days

the other thing that can set me off a little is climbing shoes. it took me a long time to find a pair that fitted well (i have odd feet) but 2 weeks before i got injured i found some. now they sit with the rest of my climbing gear in the bottom of my cupboard. sometimes when i see them i can't help but put them on. there have been a few occasions when i have found myself sitting on my bedroom floor looking at my feet squashed into my climbing shoe. i will then proceed to traversing them around the edge of the skirting board. i know this is not climbing at all but its the closest i get these days. when i forget myself slightly i will lock my arms off and sit on my knuckles when i do this. (i really shouldn't do this as it hurts my arms but i do have an habit of forgetting). i find a small joy in feeling my toes work along that small edge and it makes me miss climbing even more but i still do it. i find that just having my feet in climbing shoes brings small but painful pleasures.

and finally something that is very hard to see but is having a major affect on me right know. anyone who sees a lot of me will know i look tired most of the time and yet im doing pretty much nothing with my life. this i found quite confusing for quite a while. but something i have realised if that keeping my self in check is a massive effort emotionally and this is rather draining. ive learned to not think too hard about climbing too much of the time ive learned how to carry on and do other things and how to make it seem like im fine and everythings ok even when its not. but all these things take effort even when you dont realise you're doing them and this means im tired very often. its also impossible to keep up all of the time. as i said earlier i cry alot often when something climbingy happens or i re connect with it for a short period of time. it breaks though the defences i have put up and im left vulnerable to the wash of emotions that not climbing brings. every so often i curl up on my bed and cry. at these times i feel very alone and very far away from the world i love. but anything worth having is also worth fighting for. so i will keeping going because climbing is the sport i love.

so that is about it. thats how it feels to be me right now. i hope that i got across the emotion that i feel and how big an impact on my life that not climbing is having. i want people to be able to learn from my mistakes and see not just the physical side of being injured but the side i feel that aint talked about but can make just as much if not more difference to the person affected. i dont want people to feel sorry for me either i just want people to understand what its like to have a long term injury so hopefully they will not do what i have done. so i hope you have learned from this. i hope a few lessons can be taken away from it and that people will treat their bodies with respect. ive said this a lot already but please listen to your body. if something hurts stop! and get proper medical advice. i beg you. my next blog will have a slightly different message and i hope this first trio will make people think about injuries and do the right thing. i had to learn these lessons the hard way and i hope you can learn from me  and not repeat them. so young climbers climb hard but take care. parents keep and eye out for things a please take and mention of pains seriously not just think excuses are being made. and coaches please be aware of the damge that can be done to young bodies and know enough about injuries to recognise the basic signs.

im going to finish this blog with a quote i was told (from someone who read my last blog)
“Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.”
 edward Whymper