I did not know it could hurt like that. I thought the worst pain I could ever feel was breaking a bone, and I already went through that when I broke my leg last summer.
But no one ever told me about that other kind of pain, the one that hits your insides and remains invisible on the outside.
No bleeding or bruising or ugly swelling, but it is as real as any other visible pain could feel. I did not know about that one.
It’s as if an invisible hand holds my heart in a firm grip and maliciously squeezes it. My heart starts shrinking and tightening and suffocating; I can hardly breathe.
Its top gets stuck in my throat; its bottom reaches down to my stomach; and all in between is flimsy plastic-straw thin.
There are no painkillers I can take for that one.
No cast I can put on it for it to heal right.
No setting of a 10-week time frame before I can jump again, pain free.
I just have to wait it out.
There were days I didn’t think my heart would ever feel normal again.
I had to remind myself that I also felt that way sometimes about my leg.
Then, before I knew it, it miraculously started to feel better.
In all honesty, it may not have be a fair comparison.
Not just because the pain is different, but the healing process, too, is different.
My leg slowly and gradually got better, it was like coming down in an elevator from the 12th floor, and stopping at every floor for a while.
12 was the highest level of pain, and eventually I reached the safe painless ground level.
But that other pain though is more like a roller coaster; one day it’s shooting fast and upside-down, the next it is slow and more stable.
When I think about it, I realize I’m lucky to have an amazingly elastic muscle for a heart.
Bones are made of hard stuff, but softer things like hearts don’t get messier when they’re hurt, they can’t shatter like glass or crack like bones. They shrink and stretch.
It took my heart a while, but it started stretching back to its normal fist size. It took its time, and now it’s as powerful as it used to be and as good as new – almost.
