I have been unable to work out, wear high heels, run, walk too long even for the past few years. To really be honest, this has been happening for a while. Since 2013, I have been counting bad knees as a major hindrance to my everyday life. I have found it painful to go up and down stairs, do a jogging laparound the UP Academic Oval, even when I go around too long around the mall.

It’s really sucked. Just when I thought I found a way to workout that felt good and engaged me, I couldn’t. The pain was too much that after a day of boxing or muay thai, I would hobble around the house. I even bought braces for my knees for travel, for when I knew I was going to walk extended periods. Even with the brace on I felt horrible and had to take long breaks.

I tried a lot of things. Physical therapy. Supplements. Dieting to put less weight on my knees. Stopping exercise altogether. Even going through a procedure that included my own plasma to be harvested and reintroduced to my knee as supplementary lubricant.

Nothing has worked so far. I have to admit that this may be a lifelong issue and that my knees will always be an obstacle to being too active. But maybe it’s also my body telling me it’s not going to bounce back when I put it through the wringer and I should take care of it more overall. The past few months, I’ve been doing very moderate cardio and giving myself a break whenever I could feel the knee clicking or when I find it folding on its own while walking.

My body has its limitations but it’s been with me through a lot. It has expanded, shrunk, became bruised, scarred, but it bears all my history. It knows me and even when I’m not the biggest fan of it (big, dammit), it hasn’t given up on me yet. I recently noticed a very noticeable scar on my arm from mistakenly grazing our gate a few years ago has faded to almost nothing. So while the reminder is still there, it doesn’t have to be a glaring sign of what I’ve been through (much like my other scars). And that’s all right.

So what are your current limitations?