Beth and badminton: pain, sanity, insanity, naked joy and a video

It has been days of stone: hard. The nights are worse. After three hours of cramps so bad that I scream over and over, I get carried to bed after 3:00 am, with a previous TIA making the corner of my mouth turn down, I know I will lucky to sleep three or four hours before I have to be packed with ice from overheating. And that is not half of it, not a fraction of it. So I spend much of my day working, fighting or working to keep my long term health up, at the cost of my immediate health and sanity. Because, when you have a full heat exhaustion meltdown twice in 38 hours; and when you sleep five hours one night, then four, then just hallucinate, it is hard to know what sanity is.

I guess sanity is going forward. I get from my bed to my wheelchair because I need more painkillers. So maybe sanity is wheeling over and turning on the computer. Or maybe that’s insanity.

I went to badminton last night; I was late because a home care worker was supposed to help me dress. But she didn’t feel like it, so she didn’t, the same way she didn’t do the dishes or make my bed as I asked. I did not feel like badminton, but then, often we do what we know what will be good for us, not what we want to do.

I hate going up that hill; I hate wheeling into the Y knowing in six hours I will be in so much pain I will but unable to keep my upper body still for more than a second or two. But I do it.

Linda wasn’t there, she had to finish writing a course that was to be taught the next morning in Vancouver. She would come to watch me later. My volunteer is away for two months. So I went up alone and put my badminton racket in the rack and got out on the floor.
Because I am physically and emotionally burnt, and I knew that if I could just focus on playing, just get the endorphins going then I would be able to smile, something I hadn’t done that day. I would be able to laugh. And so, I calculatedly forced myself up the hill and into the court so that I might let myself go, and pay the price later (which was a TIA). Because these courts are where people know my name. Where people applaud when I rock my chair vertically to get an extra two inches for a slam.This is where I can be tired, where I can despair and yet cheer myself on: “Come on Beth, focus, we’ve got to get some flow here, got to get this serve!”

And when those moments come together and you smile, and laugh that is when I remember that this is what I AM fighting for. And what to the rest of the people is a hobby, is to me a reminder of so much of the life I left behind, where the frisson of play, people and purpose come together. And because so much of my body has taken choice away that I have to choose, knowing the risk, hoping that this time it won’t happen, but knowing that it probably will, all for an hour or two of wild abandon.

Badminton is where I am naked. Naked emotion, naked desire, and the one place I can be fearless because crashing to the floor or getting a birdie slam into my face (as I did last night) is nothing, absolutely nothing compared to the pain of taking a breath later.

I can’t tell if I’m crazy. But, if I can force myself, I’ll probably be there on Wednesday too. Here is a video I made, some pictures, some video Linda took of what Badminton means to me. Yes, it is the hits and points but it is the partner laughing as you pound in frustration at a missed hit or the jubilation of victory. It is how I am seen, and part of the best three hours of my week (that's how much time a week on average I genuinely feel good). I hope you enjoy it, because I did. Yes I paid, but I had joy.