Arch Enemies

I remember the very moment when I realized I ruined my feet, or perhaps that my feet were ruined.

I'm still inclined to use the active verb, for reasons we'll get into later, although I would eventually learn in the course of my long and ongoing bad-feet journey that I was perhaps always doomed to be a woman with terrible foot pain.

So, the situation: Twelve-ish years ago while on vacation, I leaned against a lamppost in the touristy bit of New Orleans, exhausted and wincing after a day of hoofing it across the city while wearing my favorite pair of neon orange low-rise Chuck Taylors. The Chucks were key to my very-Millennial outfit: a zig-zag printed maxi dress, over which I'd thrown a graphic tee and a fun belt. A straw fedora may have also been involved.

My husband, a gazelle in human form who runs marathons for fun, patiently leaned with me while I alternated from one foot to the other, rotating my ankles and stretching my quads and calves.

"I can't walk this much," I admitted to him, near tears. "I can't go like you go. My feet hurt so much." I was, in the moment, angry with him. I wanted to blame him for how bad my feet hurt, for walking too fast, or taking too-big steps, or hitting up too many destinations (on a trip that I did most of the planning for). I was searching for a reason for this painful pit stop to be anyone's fault but my own, for my desperation to slow down and sit and take a break to have nothing to do with my own body, my own anatomy, my own needs.

It took me far too long to understand that the belief that I simply had to endure pain was a lesson I learned early and weaponized against myself for decades.