“Better” – a new essay in The Sun
I kept going back even though I was sore all the time. I iced my calves and ankles. I took baths in Epsom salts. The soreness should have dampened my spirits, but instead it made me happy. I loved being sore; being sore meant something, I thought. I thought about the pain of labor, all those years ago, and how I’d gotten through it only by reminding myself, like an increasingly hysterical mantra, that the pain wasn’t like “normal” pain, it was pain with a purpose, it was pain that was getting me something I wanted badly—there was a reward at the end of it, it would be worth it.
