On Losing Your Mobility

I have pes planus. Flat feet, in plain English. The arches never formed properly, so my feet splay out when I stand, which tilts my ankles inward, which rotates my knees, which torques my hips, which pulls my pelvis out of alignment. I’m in pain most of the time. My lower back locks up. Some mornings I get out of bed like an old man, shuffling to the bathroom in small, careful steps while I wait for things to loosen up.

I didn’t notice it happening. That’s the part that gets me. There wasn’t a moment where something snapped or gave way. It was gradual — a tightness here, a dull ache there, starting to skip certain activities because they hurt more than they should. And then one day I realised I’d restructured my entire life around what my body could and couldn’t tolerate, and I didn’t know exactly when that happened.

I’ve tried things. Orthotics. Stretches. Physiotherapy exercises that take twenty minutes every morning and feel pointless after three weeks. I’ve improved some. But “improved” means it’s somewhat manageable, not that it’s fixed. Pes planus doesn’t really get fixed. You manage it, and you manage around it, and on bad days you’re just in pain and there’s nothing much to be done.

What’s strange is the scale of what it’s changed. It’s flat feet — people have flat feet. And yet it has quietly hollowed out a part of my life: the part where I could walk for hours, or go hiking, or just stand at a concert without counting down the minutes until I can sit. I miss that. I miss being in my body without negotiating with it first.

I think what I’m grieving is something I never properly valued when I had it. Your body just does what it does and you don’t have to think about it. Until you do. It’s only when something starts to fail that you understand the scale of what was quietly holding everything together.

I suspect a lot of people have their version of this — the thing that nobody takes seriously but that has quietly changed the shape of their life. It doesn’t make a good story. There’s no crisis, no moment where things sharply get better or worse. Just a person, a bit worse off than before, learning to make do.