Slowly healing, body and mind.

Very slowly, day by day, inch by inch my injuries are going away. I strive a lot to keep my fingers from harm - I obsessively watch which fingers I use to tie my shoes, to open my beer, to tie a knot. If I need to carry something heavy I very carefully load the injured finger just right - enough load to help it get stronger, not so much as to hurt it and always from the right direction so that it is never twisted or loaded from the side. Everyday, all the time. This is madness...
Recently I decided my finger is already well enough to be able to pull not only on stuff that is bloody boring, but also on stuff which borders with interesting. I found out that I can't do the interesting stuff. I started to pull a bit harder. I pulled a muscle. Damn, my hands has forgotten what it means to be loaded, they needed to get back in shape. I started again - very easy stuff, carefully loading the injured muscle, slowly and gradually increasing the load. Muscles heal fast. :) A month later the whole thing was just a memory and I was again on the semi-interesting stuff. And then I pulled a tendon. Again on the ring finger - the finger right next to my injured middle finger, the finger which takes all the load the injured one cannot. This was Friday and we were planning to go climbing Sunday. It was cold and that is never good for your injuries. "Fuck it! I'm going climbing!" And I did. Started with a toprope on something easy, tried the next thing - againg, very carefully. By the end of the day I sent my project. I sent a 6c - the hardest thing I've sent in the last year, since I actively started treating my injury. God, did I miss the positive feedback of the success - the "candy", the "plusses"! Nevermind the injury, nevermind the cold, nevermind the fears and doubts which come when your shape declines so much. It was fantastic...
Yesterday we went climbing again. The rock was wet, we were very underslept and felt like squeezed lemons. Nevermind that - we climbed as hard as we could. I lead "Buona Serra", Mishka tried it on toprope and got very excited about it. Made me very happy to see her psyched again, made me smile. In the very end of the day Gaby tried an awesome-looking route that seemed far too hard for me. He left a toprope and I decided that I actually was in the right mindset to try something beyond me. I flashed about three quarters of it (on toprope). I did moves, I didn't believe I can still do! With a couple of tries all that was left for me to do was the final move (a huge jump from very tiny holds and horribly steps). Well, I had neither the mental security, nor the physical condition to do the jump but it didn't matter. I knew that soon I would have them both. It was just like before - I had just clashed into the Next Great Route. My next project. And this one isn't a substitude for the real thing - something easy to focus on while healing. This is the real, hard, precise, scary shit! This is the reason to go climbing and get better at it.

I had forgotten what it feels like to have aching fingers all the time, stressed from the overload. To have needles of pain with almost every move, to find it somewhat difficult to type fast on a keyboard. It is great! This is the pain that shows you that yesterday you weren't just baggage in the car when you went climbing, that you went out there and did your best, that you really tried. This is pain which brings satisfaction. "Pain, so close to pleasure." Finally, this is pain that shows that you can pull and pull hard, that you are not so injured and fragile anymore and you can finally have some fear and some fun. This pain is good.

There will be other injuries and other defeats, there will be bad days. There will be life as usual. But right now I feel like I've just gotten back in the game I love and, boy, it feels great!

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