Well-Adjusted (to midlife)

At the start of this year, something changed. Nothing to do with our living arrangements, although we did move apartments, of course. Nothing to do with my or Dylan’s employment (or unemployment) status, although something is in the planning stages in my case. Nothing to do with Jasper, either. I actually can’t quite pinpoint where exactly, whether in my body or mind, the change took place, to be honest. All I know is that whatever it was, it has released a whole new energy in me, enabling me to leap, light-footed as a gazelle, into what can only be described as my Midlife Crisis.

For the second half of last year, I was struggling with maddening and debilitating migraines. Every two weeks or so, I would be struck down by one after exerting myself in some sports arena or another. The blind spots would appear, followed by the panic, then the nausea, then the headache, and then the three or four days of dizziness. Once I emerged from the symptoms, I would notice a little more weight tilting the scales of injustice downwards towards my having to accept that sports might not be something I could do as much of anymore. For two weeks, I would wallow in this realisation, and then a kind of optimistic amnesia would kick in and I would push myself out to the start line of another 10KM race, doing the exact same thing as before, but hoping for a different outcome. And round went the cycle again, and again — seven times between August and December.

I decided that my only option was to retire from sport completely. And so, after one last obstacle course hurrah at the very end of November, that’s what I did. Sort of. I mean, I intended to. That is to say, as I packed for Christmas in Australia, I abandoned the half-marathon training plan I was about 60% of the way through, stopped looking for new events to sign up to and mentally prepared myself for a new sloth lifestyle. 

Now, some might call it a Christmas miracle, others might put it down to a change in diet, others to a shift in my chakras. But whichever explanation I choose to assign to it, the facts of the matter are that by the time we returned from two weeks in Australia, something had changed. Personally, I think it was a case of musculoskeletal misalignment causing a trapped nerve, and that I have the chiropractor to thank for my successful graduation into midlife crisis mode. 

Having got past the niceties of ‘So, were you in a car crash recently? Your spine shows some evidence of being bashed around’ and ‘your legs are four centimetres different in length’, and after I cured a sudden bout of dizzy sweats by eating a pack of emergency Skittles and having a little lie down, she got to work. Her initial adjustment on our first day in Queensland left me feeling as though I was walking on a slant, so wonky had my hips, back, and neck been for the past, ooh I don’t know, maybe 3.5 years? But it also sent me off to enjoy the festive season without the lurking fear of bright lights, with no issues standing up quickly, able to enjoy a midday beer, and eager to get out in the sun for a run (not after the beer, you understand). Her second adjustment, the day before we left, must have been the one that really unleashed my midlife potential because, within two weeks of arriving back in Mumbai, I was out on the road before dawn, at the startline of the half marathon I most definitely had not fully trained for. 

In my defence, I had told myself I’d just do the first part and then duck under a barrier. I’d just run over the sea link — a relatively new stretch of over-the-sea bridge-road on which no pedestrians are allowed under normal circumstances — and then head for home. I’d just enjoy those first eight or nine kilometres of closed-off highway and then call it quits. I’d definitely not make it past the ten kilometre marker. That would be silly, what with no training and all. 

As I sent Dylan a selfie from the 15-kilometre marker it became clear to me, as it had evidently always been to him, that I was going to run all 21 kilometres of it. Just in case I wasn’t completely divested of all migraine risk, and working on the theory that low blood sugar is a trigger, I was managing my glucose levels by eating any and all of the snacks handed out by the generous and enthusiastic supporters who lined the roadside of the last ten kilometres or so. By now, I had slowed to a sort of plodding jog, and was more than capable of maintaining that pace as I gobbled up oranges with salt, biscuits, electrolyte drinks, my own glucose gels, water, a piece of peanut butter toast, more oranges with salt and some kind of chocolate wafer protein bar. I had also removed my pollution mask that had been protecting my lungs from the early morning winter smog, which made it much easier to eat. My legs may have been numb but my brain hadn’t gone into a spasm and so I just kept going. I was hardly setting the road on fire, as one sprightly old man reminded me as he pulled up along side me, shouting ‘I’m almost 80 and I’m still running! You can do this!’

And suddenly, I had done it! I collected my medal and my banana, found my friends who had both separately overtaken me with a tap on the shoulder and facial expressions that said ‘what are you still doing here?’ at around 19-kilometres, hopped on a train for the first time in my Mumbai life (because all the roads were shut for the safety of the runners) and was able to enjoy the ride home. I wasn’t curled up in a ball, crying for darkness and wondering if my words would come out in the right order if I spoke. I wasn’t dizzy or floppy either. When my friends and I overshot our stop by accidentally taking an express train, and found ourselves wading through knee deep fresh mint and coriander in a bustling Sunday market to secure a taxi back to where we wanted to be, the smell didn’t make me nauseous. If I had trusted my legs to jump for joy, I would have. 

While I didn’t want to tempt fate by assuming I was fixed, I did start to put more resources towards understanding how this new partnership that my body seemed open to exploring with my brain might work. A few weeks wearing a continuous blood glucose monitor taught me a lot about which foods make my body behave like a frenzied toddler on a sugar high and which ones my body responds to in a more adult manner. Paying attention to which foods, in which order and at what time of day gave wacky chart readings has significantly improved the relationship between what I want to be able to do and what my body will allow me to do. 

That is to say, my midlife crisis is now in full swing. Unhindered by the pressure of either migraine or employment, I am free to pursue all the classic signs of my aging millennial status in the most irresponsible ways. I’m running in the sun, I’m doing strength training circuits outdoors in summer, I’m playing tennis under floodlights, I’m out on the golf course before dinner, I’m back on the hockey pitch, I’m taking parkour classes with Jasper, when even the thought of having to turn myself upside-down in a forwards roll would have made me nauseous last year. This weekend just gone I even paid to run in circles and carry heavy things around a mini Hyrox-inspired arena, just because I could. And, because even in a midlife crisis, balance is key, I have been offsetting my exercise with therapies. Agreeing to play in a school parents’ padel tournament connected me with an acupuncture clinic whose treatments have released decades of tension in my neck and shoulders, allowing me to wake up pain free in the mornings for the first time in years. 

They say knowledge is power and in this case, it really feels that way. Last year I didn’t know I was 4 centimetres wonky, I didn’t know I was eating in the wrong way, and I didn’t know there might be a way to manage the migraines and continue to do sports. Now, I can cope with glinting sunlight, I can sign up to events without fear, and I can fuel myself properly for busy days. I still don’t have a definitive answer as to whether this change is mental or physical, because migraines are so shrouded in mystery that nobody can really tell me either way. 

But I do know that I am probably the fittest and best nourished I’ve ever been in my life, despite all my parts being well out of warranty.