Living Like I’m Hurt

I’ve been thinking a lot about ceilings lately.

Limiters. Governors. Things that keep you from going too fast or pushing too hard or breaking whatever machine you’re inside of.

And, I mean, those things exist for a reason. They keep you safe. They protect you. They keep you from blowing out the engine.

But I keep wondering what happens when the limiter stays on too long.

What happens when the thing that kept you safe becomes the thing that keeps you small.

I’m thinking about this because I’m sitting here with all these little pains. Nothing dramatic. Nothing that makes for a good story. A knot in my shoulder. A sore heel from rolling my ankle a few months ago. An elbow that hurts for some reason. A wrist on the same arm that hurts too, which makes me think maybe it’s all connected somehow. Maybe it’s weakness. Maybe it’s compensation. Maybe it’s just being almost 43 and realizing the body keeps receipts.

And my response to all of that has been, basically, don’t go to the gym until I feel better.

Which sounds smart.

And sometimes it is smart.

But I’m not sure it’s healing.

I think sometimes it’s just waiting.

And waiting can start to look like wisdom if you let it sit there long enough.

That’s the part I’m thinking about. The way caution can feel like maturity. The way not doing something can feel responsible. The way fear can dress itself up as patience.

Because, yes, there are times when you have to heal. You have to rest. You have to listen to pain. You have to stop pushing because pushing would be stupid.

But there’s also a point where you aren’t healing anymore.

You’re just living like you’re hurt.

That’s the phrase I keep circling.

Living like I’m hurt.

Because I think I’ve done that in more places than my body.

I’ve built a lot of my life around avoiding the feeling of impact. Avoiding rejection. Avoiding embarrassment. Avoiding wanting too much out loud. Avoiding the kind of failure where people can see that you tried.

And I don’t think I did that because I’m lazy or weak or whatever. I think I did it because, at some point, it worked. It kept me intact. It got me through whatever season I was in.

But I don’t know that I’m in that season anymore.

That’s the weird thing.

You build scaffolding around the broken parts of yourself so you can keep standing. And then one day you look up and realize you’ve been living inside the scaffolding like it’s the house.

That’s what I’m trying to figure out.

What parts of my life are actual walls?

And what parts are just old scaffolding?

I’ve been listening to Chris Stapleton lately, especially “Tennessee Whiskey,” and there’s this thing in his voice that pisses me off a little. Not because he’s doing anything wrong. He’s incredible. It pisses me off because he sounds free.

He sounds like he found another gear.

Not just technically. Obviously he can sing. But it’s not only that. It’s like he has given himself permission to put his whole chest into it. To sound ugly if ugly is where the truth is. To bend a note until it hurts. To not be so damn polite about feeling something.

And I keep thinking, there’s no real reason I can’t sing more like that.

Not like him, exactly. I’m not saying I have Chris Stapleton’s voice sitting in my throat and I’m just refusing to use it.

But that kind of freedom?

That kind of abandon?

That willingness to stop protecting myself from being heard?

I don’t think that belongs only to people at the top of the mountain.

I think I’ve just told myself it does.

Same thing with BTS. They’ve basically been in my house for the last 15 months because my wife listens to them, and then we saw them live, and you watch people perform at that level and it does something to you. At least it did to me.

Because you’re watching people who have clearly pushed past the point where most of us stop.

Singing. Dancing. Moving. Committing. Letting the body become part of the expression instead of this awkward thing you drag around and apologize for.

And again, I find myself thinking, what exactly is stopping me?

Not from being them.

That’s not the point.

But from singing.

From dancing.

From moving.

From using my body.

From letting myself be ridiculous for a while so I can maybe get free.

And the answer, most of the time, is me.

I stop myself.

I tell myself the proper thing is control. Sing correctly. Hit the note. Be accurate. Learn technique. Don’t push too hard. Don’t blow out your voice. Don’t embarrass yourself. Don’t be the guy who thinks he can do something he can’t do.

And look, technique matters. I’m not trying to make a case for just screaming in the car until I damage myself and calling that art.

But I do think technique can become a hiding place.

Accuracy can become a hiding place.

Taste can become a hiding place.

You can get so focused on doing something “right” that you never actually do it alive.

That’s the thing I’m scared of.

Not being bad.

Being contained.

Being safe in a way that slowly drains the blood out of everything.

And I don’t know that I want that.

I think I want to sound like a person who is trying to figure something out. I want the seams to show a little. I want the hesitation and the reach and the places where I’m almost saying the thing before I know how to say it.

Because that’s where the life is.

At least for me.

I keep thinking about how many areas of my life have these limiters on them.

Money. My body. My voice. My writing. My relationships. My ambitions. The car I want. The career I want. The kind of husband and friend and brother I want to be.

There are real limits, obviously.

I can’t just go buy the car I want right now. I don’t have the money. That’s real.

But if I needed a car, really needed one, I’d figure it out. It might be a junker. It might be ugly. It might not be the dream. But I’d find a way.

So maybe the fact is: I can’t buy that specific car right now.

But the story I turn it into is: I can’t have the life I want.

And those are not the same thing.

That’s where I think I get myself.

I take a fact and I turn it into fate.

I take a pain and I turn it into a personality.

I take a limitation and I treat it like a law.

And maybe growth, at this point in my life, is learning to separate those things.

A fact is a fact.

A limit might be real today.

But that doesn’t mean it’s permanent.

That doesn’t mean it’s identity.

That doesn’t mean it gets to be God.

I’ve been talking to a therapist and a life coach over the past several months, and I can feel something shifting. Not in some big, cinematic, “new me” way. I don’t really trust that anyway.

It’s smaller than that.

It’s more like I’m starting to show up for myself.

I’m starting to say what I want without immediately apologizing for wanting it.

I’m starting to understand that taking up space is not the same thing as taking space away from someone else.

I’m starting to believe that having needs doesn’t make me a burden.

Which sounds obvious when I write it down.

But it has not been obvious in my body.

My body has believed different things for a long time.

My body has believed: stay small, stay useful, stay reasonable, don’t ask too much, don’t be embarrassing, don’t be difficult, don’t want something so loudly that people can hear you wanting it.

And I think I’m tired of that.

I’m tired of mistaking restraint for virtue.

I’m tired of acting like desire is something I need to defend in court.

I’m tired of calling circumstances walls when maybe they’re just weights I haven’t tried to lift yet.

That doesn’t mean I want to be reckless.

That’s the distinction I’m trying to make.

I don’t want to ignore pain. I don’t want to blow out my voice. I don’t want to injure myself because I’m trying to prove some inspirational point on a Tuesday.

But I do want to learn the difference between pain that says stop and pain that says grow.

Because they are not the same.

There is pain that means damage.

And there is pain that means capacity.

There is pain that means something is wrong.

And there is pain that means something is waking up.

I think I’ve treated too much discomfort like danger.

And maybe some of it is just contact.

Maybe some of it is the feeling of finally pressing against the edge of my life instead of standing safely in the middle of it.

So maybe the work is not dramatic.

Maybe it’s almost stupidly simple.

Go to the gym, but don’t be an idiot.

Pick up a weight that is a little heavier than the one I know I can lift.

Not a heroic amount. Not some movie montage nonsense. Just a little more.

Progressive overload.

Ask the body a new question.

Sing a little louder in the car.

Let the note be less perfect if it means it has more truth in it.

Move my body even if I look stupid.

Write the ugly sentence first.

Say the thing before I polish all the blood out of it.

Ask for what I want before I explain why I’m allowed to want it.

Love bigger.

Show up more.

Stop treating embarrassment like death.

Stop treating disappointment like prophecy.

Stop treating old pain like it gets the final vote.

Because maybe that’s the difference.

Maybe I don’t need to live like I’m hurt anymore.

Maybe I need to accept the kind of hurt that comes from trying.

The ache of effort.

The burn of growth.

The soreness of becoming someone who is still me, just less governed.

Less edited.

Less afraid of being seen trying.

Maybe that’s what I’m after.

Not becoming a new person.

Just moving past healing, where limitations and boundaries are useful, to growth, where old clothes no longer fit and you need to just bust out of them.