rebuilding

It always takes at least a day or two to really feel all the places I’ve been hit. In the span of 48 hours I grow to be an elderly woman, if only temporarily. For the time it takes my body to repair itself. To put her back together.
As I lay in bed and reach for the alarm clock, pull a shirt over my head, tug my backpack over my shoulder, walk up the stairs from my apartment- I feel everything. My left shoulder, my right, my right hip, my left hip and thigh, my forehead, my back. Oh, how I had forgotten about my back. My body screams to me. It has awoken.
By Wednesdays practice I’m usually fine. But those Sunday scrimmages, they beat me. They age me. They tear me down.
The fact that I keep going, it rebuilds me. Week by week, I am being replaced with better and better parts. The fact that I keep going, it's making me a new woman.