Past Tense

Past tense

How many times do you find yourself saying to someone, I used to be able to do this or that?  I have in the past done exactly the same. What made me change?  I learnt I had to accept myself for who I am right at this moment in time.

At the age of 18 I had my life mapped out I’d thought. Little did I know. I had been a Police Cadet in Sussex since the age of 14 and had passed all my entrance exams and was just waiting for the physical tests. To me I knew I’d pass that without an extra breath. I was a fit, County Level runner and loved extreme sports. Little was I to know what was around the corner.

At the time I was working for the Government and on my way to my office in Central London. I turned to look in a shop window and that’s when it happened.

I was frozen to the spot with pain. Being a rather introverted person, I stood there wondering what to do. Do I go and get back on the train or do I carry on to work?

I slowly made my way to work, a five minute walk, which took around forty five that day.  When I arrived they suggested I went home as I was apparently fifty shades of pale. This was to be the end of my Police career. Ended before it had started.

I’d ruptured a disc in my lower back so badly that I’d have to have a metal plate put in a week later or risk losing more feeling in my left leg or even being paralysed below the waist.

I spent the following five years living the ‘if only’ life after the unfortunate event on that day. Until one day, driving home from work, I gave myself a metaphorical kick up the behind, as I released I’d lived the past years on a pause button.

For those five years I’d felt permanently tired, why?  Because not only was I trying to get on with my daily life. I’d been tormenting myself with the ‘what could’ have been.

Once free of those shackles of the past, I found my energy levels soared. I started to learn to live for the moment. Baby steps. In fact my first step was to train as a personal trainer and sports massage therapist. I had found that zing in me by releasing those chains of steel that were holding me back.

How can you start to break those chains?

·      Look at all the things you can do right now – It might be five minutes of gardening or walking today, then make it six minutes tomorrow.  After two weeks you’re a third of the way to an hour. Baby steps, no looking back at the “what ifs”

·      Write a letter to all those nemeses of the past. Write it a letter, with words or even a picture. Then “let it go’. You can burn it, shred and bury it. Or plant it under a tree.

·      Be grateful for everything you have, your uniqueness is your best asset.  As the saying goes ‘Be yourself, everyone else is taken’.

I learnt it was ok to be me again just as I am, not the ‘what was’ from the past. I’m even part bionic now!

In my next blog find out how I faced the bullies including the one who used to stare back at me in the mirror.