A few years ago, I was working in Pennsylvania, helping launch a Utah-based solar company that’s now been part of my life for nearly a decade.
Posture while sitting is a struggle for most people, but for some reason, it’s especially bad for me when I travel. Maybe I can blame hotel desks for that.
On a warm afternoon in Oaks, PA, I laced up my shoes for a quick seven-mile run, taking a call with my solar business partners on my AirPods while I ran along tree-lined streets and looped around a golf course. I even joked with a group of older gentlemen smoking cigars that I was great target practice, if they were looking to work on their swing.
It was a great run — and I was on a work call at the same time.
Productivity machine. In control.
Later that night, after a shower and a quick drive to Wendy’s for a burger and Frosty, I climbed out of my rental car in the hotel parking lot and felt an unfamiliar pop in my right hip. It wasn’t particularly painful at first — just weird. The pain faded quickly, and I brushed it off.
Back to posture: I have a bad habit of sitting with one leg crossed over the other under desks while I work, applying light pressure to the underside of the desk with my elevated knee. I think it started as a light stretch that, as a runner, always felt helpful — or at least that’s the story I told myself. But by then, it was more reflex than anything.
That night, deep into a cool project and talking to my wife on the phone, I sat with my right leg crossed over my left for much longer than I realized.
When I finally pushed away from the desk around 11:30 p.m., I couldn’t stand.
I can’t remember another time in my life when I experienced that much pain. Any attempt to move my right hip sent shockwaves through the right side of my body. I couldn’t straighten my leg at all. My hip had locked up completely.
One of my running buddies likes to joke that a real athlete would just “walk it off.”
This was not one of those moments.
I had just run seven strong miles a few hours earlier. Now I couldn’t even stand.
I called one of my coworkers and, thankfully, he was still awake. I explained to him — not that calmly — that I needed a ride to the hospital.
Getting to the hotel lobby was… challenging. It was late enough that no one saw me holding my right leg in that cross-legged position with my left hand, using my right arm to balance against the wall as I hopped down the hallway. No one but the hotel attendant and my coworker saw me in that state. And that poor attendant — he hardly knew what to do. I asked him to grab a rolling chair from the office. Thankfully, they had one. I sat there — sweating, in pain, and more than a little embarrassed — until my friend arrived.
He stayed with me in the ER until after 3:00 a.m. The doctor diagnosed a partial tear in my right hip flexor, along with a severely pinched nerve that had somehow worked its way into the joint. He and a nurse helped unlock the hip — even with pain meds, it was an experience I won’t forget.
I left on crutches, non-weight-bearing for at least ten days.
For someone who was running 60+ miles per week, it was humbling to have to lift my own leg into a car with my hands because the muscles couldn’t do the work. I became office gossip when I showed up on crutches the next day. I also gained a new appreciation for people who travel with mobility issues. Airports and airplanes are not accommodating.
The injury mostly healed. I can still run. It flares up sometimes, but nothing that keeps me from moving forward. Or up and down stairs.
But here’s what really stuck with me:
I went from independent to completely dependent in a matter of minutes.
And not just on my coworker.
A young man we knew from Utah was from the Oaks, PA area. By sheer coincidence, he was home the same weekend I got hurt. My wife reached out, and both he and his dad came to help me — in ways I wouldn’t have felt comfortable asking from a stranger.
I had to let people take care of me. I had to ask for help.
I had to sit still.
And, honestly, I hated it.
Don’t get me wrong — I appreciated every bit of it. I was so grateful that people were willing to drop what they were doing to help. I even had a coworker at the office offer to warm up my lunch and bring it to my desk.
But I hated it because I wasn’t the hero in this version of the story.
You’ve probably seen the pattern by now.
I want — maybe need — to be the rescuer.
I want to be the guy who brings the warm lunch. The guy who gets the 2 a.m. call.
But this time, I wasn’t rescuing anyone.
I wasn’t solving the problem.
I was the problem. At least, that’s how it felt.
I’ve carried this belief for a long time — sometimes consciously, sometimes not — that I’m supposed to be the one who shows up. The one who keeps it all together. I’ve said it’s my work ethic. My moral compass.
My love language.
But I just realized — literally while writing this — that it started much earlier than adulthood.
When my mom was sick and I was still just a kid, I tried to be helpful. I changed my sister’s diapers in the night when my mom was too weak to get up, and my dad — exhausted from carrying everything else — couldn’t hear my baby sister’s cries. I made his lunch, unprompted. I couldn’t fix anything big, but I tried to carry whatever I could.
Somewhere in that stretch of childhood, I learned this:
Love means carrying the weight before anyone asks.
And somehow, over the years, I confused that belief. Love and loyalty started to mean always being the one who keeps it together. Always giving. Never receiving. Because receiving meant being a burden.
That’s quite the heroic mask for pride to wear.
Society works when people give more than they take. But there’s a danger in always saying, “If I can help, I should.” Because shame quietly adds: “And if I need help, I’ve failed.”
That injury forced a shift I didn’t want — and still sometimes resist — but I needed it. I had to rely on people. Not just lean on them — literally and figuratively — but depend on them.
It reminded me: maybe the goal isn’t always to be the strong one.
Maybe sometimes, it’s okay to let go of control, to be vulnerable, to ugly cry on someone’s shoulder, to let someone else carry the weight for a while.
Hard as it is to admit… I’m not always the hero in my own story.
And maybe that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment