The Sneakers, the Stilettos & the Pain Between Them

A Love Letter to the Longest Relationship I’ve Ever Had: My Pain

Dear Pain,

I suppose after all these years, you deserve a love letter.

Not because I love you.

God, no.

If there were a way to pack your things, leave them neatly by the door, change the locks, block your number, and pretend we never met, I would have done it years ago.

But unlike most relationships in my life, you never left.

People did.

Jobs did.

Dreams did.

Versions of me did.

Cities changed. Addresses changed. Relationships began and ended. Friendships disappeared. Plans fell apart. New plans were made. I grew older. I became harder in some places and softer in others.

But you?

You stayed.

Fifteen-plus years later, you are still here.

So congratulations, Pain.

You officially win the award for the longest relationship I have ever had.

And considering my dating history, apparently all you had to do was be consistent.

Funny, isn’t it?

The one thing I have begged to leave me is the one thing that never has.

We met in 2009.

I didn’t choose you.

I didn’t swipe right.

I didn’t see any red flags because there wasn’t exactly an introduction.

One moment I had a body I trusted without thinking about it, and the next I was beginning a relationship with a body I would have to negotiate with for the rest of my life.

There was no breakup period with my old life.

No closure.

No final dinner.

No chance to say, Wait, I’m not finished being her yet.

She was just gone.

And you moved in.

At first, I thought you were temporary.

That’s the funny thing about catastrophic moments: somewhere in the beginning, you still believe there will be an “after.”

After the surgeries.

After rehabilitation.

After healing.

After enough time.

After enough doctors.

After enough determination.

After enough prayers.

I kept waiting for the day I would wake up and you would finally have packed your bags.

You never did.

Instead, we learned how to live together.

You followed me everywhere.

Into hospital rooms.

Into physical therapy.

Into bedrooms at 3 a.m.

Into showers.

Into grocery stores.

Into airports.

Into dates.

Into job interviews.

Into meetings.

Into gyms.

Into vacations.

Into photographs where nobody could see you.

You came with me when I wore sneakers.

You came with me when I stubbornly wore stilettos.

And maybe that’s where the name of this whole thing really makes sense.

Sneakers & Stilettos.

Because my life has always existed somewhere between what my body requires and what my spirit refuses to surrender.

The sneakers are reality.

The stilettos are rebellion.

The sneakers say, Be careful.

The stilettos say, Watch me.

And somewhere between the two is me.

People see the shoes.

They don’t see what it costs to stand in them.

That’s probably one of the strangest things about chronic pain: eventually you become so good at carrying it that people forget you’re carrying anything at all.

I learned how to smile while hurting.

I learned how to work while hurting.

I learned how to sell, laugh, flirt, travel, dress up, make jokes, show up for people, take pictures, make plans and chase dreams while hurting.

I learned how to answer, “How are you?”

with,

“I’m good.”

Because what exactly am I supposed to say?

“Well, my ankle feels like it has declared war on the rest of my body, but your appetizers look fantastic.”

There isn’t really an appropriate conversational opening for:

“Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Paula, and my body has been hurting for more than a decade.”

So I adapted.

Humans are terrifyingly good at adapting.

Even to things they should never have had to get used to.

Sometimes living with you feels like carrying a brick in my pocket every single day.

The brick doesn’t become lighter.

I just became stronger at carrying it.

And that’s an important distinction.

Because people sometimes look at strength and assume the struggle disappeared.

It didn’t.

I just developed better muscles for surviving it.

There are mornings when getting out of bed requires a negotiation.

Days when every step reminds me of what happened.

Nights when I cannot find a comfortable position because apparently you also suffer from separation anxiety.

Vacations where you came along without being invited.

Beautiful moments where part of my brain was still quietly calculating how far I had to walk back to the car.

I have built an entire life around calculations most people never have to make.

How far?

How long?

How many stairs?

Where can I sit?

What shoes can I wear?

How much will this hurt tomorrow?

Is this worth it?

Sometimes the answer is no.

And sometimes I look at the stilettos and think:

Absolutely.

Because if you’re coming anyway, Pain, at least we’re going to look fabulous.

I have hated you.

There. That’s probably the most honest sentence in this entire letter.

I have hated you with an intensity I don’t know how to explain.

I have hated what you took from me.

I have hated the decisions you made for me without asking permission.

I have hated watching other people move through the world effortlessly while I calculate every step.

I have hated explaining you.

Defending you.

Hiding you.

Accommodating you.

Pretending you aren’t as loud as you are.

I have hated the person I became on the days when you were louder than everything else.

And perhaps most of all, I have hated that there was never anyone to break up with.

There was nobody I could scream at and say,

“Give me my old life back.”

Because accidents don’t apologize.

Bodies don’t explain themselves.

Life doesn’t always provide someone to blame.

Sometimes something terrible simply happens.

And then you wake up the next morning and have to figure out how to live anyway.

But here’s the complicated part of this love letter.

You didn’t only take from me.

And I almost resent admitting that.

Because I would never tell someone that suffering is a gift.

Some things are simply painful.

Some things are unfair.

Some things we would gladly return without keeping the lesson.

But because you stayed, I had to become someone capable of living beside you.

You taught me discipline when motivation disappeared.

You taught me that strength isn’t always dramatic.

Sometimes strength is putting your shoes on.

Sometimes it’s making it through a workday.

Sometimes it’s going to the gym when your body already feels exhausted.

Sometimes it’s canceling plans without feeling guilty.

Sometimes it’s asking for help.

Sometimes it’s admitting that today hurts more than yesterday.

And sometimes strength is putting on the damn stilettos anyway.

Not because they don’t hurt.

Because I refuse to let pain make every decision for me.

You also taught me something about people.

Pain has a strange way of revealing who can sit beside something they cannot fix.

Some people want the inspirational version of survival.

They like the woman who says,

“Look what I overcame.”

They aren’t always as comfortable with the woman who says,

“I’m still overcoming it.”

Because my story doesn’t have a neat ending.

There isn’t a chapter where the pain disappears and inspirational music starts playing.

There is no miraculous final scene where I run into the sunset on a perfectly functioning ankle.

This isn’t that kind of story.

This is the story of continuing.

And continuing isn’t glamorous.

It’s repetitive.

It’s frustrating.

It’s boring sometimes.

It’s waking up with the same problem you went to sleep with and deciding to build a life anyway.

That might be the bravest thing I’ve ever done.

Pain, you have watched me become so many women.

You knew the younger version of me who thought life would unfold according to some imaginary timeline.

You watched her disappear.

You watched me rebuild.

You watched me fail.

You watched me start over.

You watched me love people who didn’t stay.

You watched friendships fade.

You watched careers change.

You watched me move.

You watched me turn forty.

You watched me look in the mirror and realize that somehow, despite everything I thought would destroy me, I was still standing.

Maybe differently.

Maybe imperfectly.

Maybe with hardware and scars and a body that comes with its own terms and conditions.

But standing.

You were there for all of it.

The longest relationship of my life.

The most toxic relationship imaginable.

And somehow the one relationship I couldn’t leave.

For years I thought healing meant defeating you.

Now I understand healing differently.

Healing isn’t always the absence of pain.

Sometimes healing is refusing to build your entire identity around it.

I am not my accident.

I am not my ankle.

I am not my scars.

I am not the surgeries.

I am not the nights I cried because I couldn’t imagine doing this forever.

I am not the things I can no longer do.

I am not the life I might have lived.

You are part of my story.

But you are not the author.

I am.

And that may be the one thing you never managed to take from me.

So this is my love letter to you, Pain.

A very dysfunctional love letter.

Zero stars. Would not recommend the relationship.

But still—a letter.

Because after all these years, I finally understand something:

I don’t need to love what happened to love the woman who survived it.

I don’t need to be grateful for pain to be proud of what I built around it.

I don’t have to call suffering a blessing just because I found strength inside of it.

And I don’t need you to disappear before I give myself permission to live.

That might be the biggest lesson of all.

For years, some part of me was waiting.

Waiting until I felt better.

Waiting until life became easier.

Waiting until my body cooperated.

Waiting until you left.

But life kept happening while I waited.

So eventually I stopped waiting.

I traveled.

I worked.

I loved.

I got my heart broken.

I laughed.

I reinvented myself.

I started over.

I wore the sneakers.

And sometimes, against all reasonable medical and practical judgment, I wore the stilettos.

Because those two pairs of shoes tell the story better than I ever could.

The sneakers remind me that I have limitations.

The stilettos remind me that limitations don’t get to become my identity.

One represents survival.

The other represents defiance.

And I have spent more than fifteen years learning how to walk somewhere between the two.

So, Pain, I suppose this is where I should say thank you.

But I’m not going to.

You don’t get credit for the woman I became.

I do.

You didn’t make me strong.

I became strong because you gave me no other option.

You didn’t make me resilient.

I chose to keep rebuilding.

You didn’t teach me how to survive.

I taught myself.

You were simply there to witness it.

And maybe that’s the ending I needed all along.

Not:

“Thank you for making me who I am.”

But:

“Look who I became despite you.”

You may be the longest relationship I’ve ever had.

But you will never be the love of my life.

That title belongs to the woman who kept choosing life while carrying you.

Me.

So tomorrow morning, when my feet hit the floor, you’ll probably be there.

Of course you will.

Consistency has always been your strongest quality.

I’ll complain about you.

I’ll probably swear at you.

I’ll negotiate with you.

And then I’ll get dressed.

I’ll put one foot in front of the other.

Some days in sneakers.

Some days in stilettos.

And some days in whatever the hell hurts the least.

But I’ll keep walking.

Because after all these years, Pain, there is one thing you should know about me by now:

You may have changed the way I walk through this life.

But you never stopped me from walking through it.

And you never will.

— Sneakers & Stilettos