Two years ago, I was doing aerial splits on the trampoline. Today, I cannot get through grocery shopping without limping and holding desperately onto the handle of the shopping cart. I’ll forever remember this winter as the season that made no sense. The weather has added to the surreal experience, the broken polar vortex offering a nice metaphorical symmetry to my own internal system break down. In the record-breaking wind chills, I ventured to the orthopedic doctor to be told I needed a new hip at age 41. My life has been frozen by unseasonable forces.

The winter howled, iced, and snowed us in for the past month. We have had record snow day cancellations. The symbiosis between the external and internal environments of my body has left me feeling a bit witchy, as if nature is mourning my broken system as well as its own. We are aging poorly, accumulating irreparable damage, but we can’t stop the world. After I returned from the doctor, my son asked if we could go to the bowling alley/arcade because snow days are supposed to be fun. My children, thankfully, have no concept of tragedy. Mom is always going to be alright because she is mom. So I went, limped around, buried the horror, and built a new plan for myself.

My new bright-eyed young physician therapist claims we won’t stop until I am back to 100%. Perhaps I will experience a physical therapy miracle once my hips are realigned and my muscles are stretched and strengthened. I don’t know and the fog of pain and uncertainty shadows my daily life. As much as I want to maintain the persona of the plucky heroine who faces adversity with grace and humor, I sometimes need to let the mask slip sometimes and pout at my aches.

The hardest part is all the ways my life has gotten smaller, how fear of pain has infused itself into my decision-making process. The circumstances create a sort of existential claustrophobia. My only recourse is to pedal the bike at the gym, to pull and push on the rowing machine, to regain the feeling of strength and control over my body. I try to remember that life is bigger than my problems and that my ability to contribute to it does not require physical perfection. But I do not like limitations.