Not trusting your own body

I'm not the greatest fan of my own body. For about a decade now, my back has been giving me (a lot of) problems, some days more than others. A few years ago, when the pain got so severe I could hardly function properly (not being able to sit or concentrate), I went to see a number of doctors, but their 'guesswork treatment' (as the causes for back pain are often very difficult to determine) only made things worse. And I mean this literally: some electric shock machine gave me a 'permanent electric twitch' (for lack of a better description) by my left shoulder blade, which comes and goes, but which has been there for over 2 years now; and some treatment which passed radio waves through my back muscles made the pain a lot worse. (And when I told the doctors they dismissed this and even refused to see me about it, so I switched hospitals.) The other attempted treatments 'just' failed, at least not providing side effects.

Finally I just gave up (after the electric shock thing failed) and set my mind to accepting my back pains as an inevitable and uncurable part of my life. At the time I had already been doing exercises to strengthen my back and make/keep it flexible - the only thing that has helped me get through the day, since painkillers don't work at all - so I just started each day by doing these exercises for half an hour and tried to accept my predicament. After a while I managed to accept this, and it didn't limit me that much, as I could still do almost anything, physically, including all kinds of sports, so it could have been worse.

However, a few months ago I incurred a severe knee injury playing football, and I needed an operation to even be able to stretch my leg. After that was done, I started rebuilding my leg muscles and all that, but now, two and a half months later, my knee is still giving me problems. It is supporting my weight again, and I can even run once more, which feels great after being as good as immobile for two months. However, turning (quickly) often sends a shooting pain up my leg, and I cannot trust it to support me when jumping off a ledge or something, or making any 'uncommon' movements for that matter. This makes me feel like a grandpa who has to be careful doing all kinds of stuff in order not to hurt himself, instead of like a 25-year-old guy in his prime.
I love action: I delight in running and climbing onto and jumping off of things, and I'm going to go parachuting this summer, regardless of my knee. Therefore not being as mobile or flexible as I used to be is a nightmare for me. I think that if my knee doesn't get a lot stronger in the coming months, I will even call this injury the worst thing that ever happened to me, as becoming 'crippled' or physically limited is truly my nightmare.

In addition to my back and knee problems, there are some other physical unpleasantries, most likely related to my back problems. In short, however undiagnosed, it is probably a mild form of hypermobility syndrome, allowing joints to stretch farther than normal and such. Example: when doing archery, when I pull back the string to its full extent, my shoulder gives me some problems, like it is almost unable to handle the pressure on it. Things like that. A current concern is my neck, which seems to crack more severely by the day (and when I twist it, it sounds like there is sand in it). I wonder if I should stop headbanging at concerts. I thought about seeing a doctor about it, but as he will not understand why headbanging is so awesome, and dear to me, he will undoubtedly advise against continuing to do so, 'just to be safe', so why even bother going? (Safety isn't everything, as it makes your life dull and stagnant as shit.) Anyway, most likely my physical problems will get (much?) worse as I grow older. Which sucks.

So, you will understand I am definitely not the greatest fan of my body. I feel like I cannot trust it, that it will fail me; I feel it is getting worse in various places, like my neck, at the moment; I feel I need to do cool, active things right now instead of postponing them for various reasons, before my body fails me and I cannot undertake such things anymore. It makes me live in the now all the more, without as much regard for the future as I used to. So if I take risks now, resulting in fun or even incredible experiences, but running the risk or hurting myself (even more), I consider this worth it. If I played the part of the wounded animal just waiting for things to get better, not taking any chances, and thus not further damaging my body, but not going through wonderful experiences either, I may get to lead a 'normal' life longer, but I would feel like a scared little girl, living in fear. I would rather feel alive for a relatively short time than like a zombie not going out and doing cool things but staying at home and watching TV or something. (I would watch Night of the Living Dead.)

What I will do is train my injured leg and hope for the best, but I will not cower from potential harm to come to me. Perhaps playing football will be out of the question for the rest of my life, I don't know, but I will be damned if I just throw in the towel. So I will go parachuting, and do tons of other cool stuff in the coming years, before my rotten body decides it will disallow me to continue doing what I love. After that, if my body indeed fails me, I guess I will have plenty of time for the other things I have always wanted to do but never have time for, like writing a book or something. But I suppose that will have to wait as long as my body will still work with me.

And when I am old and I can't do active stuff worth shit, I will go parachuting again, but just fail to open the damn thing. Go out with a bang instead of coughing my sick ass to death in a bed with grieving family and friends next to me. No, I will not be pathetic and let my body rule over me. Life should be fun, and if it is no longer, with no hope of recovery any time soon, it should be terminated in the coolest way possible. At least then I will show my body it will never take my balls!