From wiki: An Achilles’ heel is a weakness despite overall strength, which can lead to downfall. While the mythological origin refers to a physical vulnerability, idiomatic references to other attributes or qualities that can lead to downfall are common.
Indifference to self? Or just a high tolerance for pain? Or both. Both. I vote for both. For an age, I had a sore spot, a hurt, an ouchie on my right foot. This was a hundred years ago. I was waiting tables on the Upper Westside, I was auditioning, I was taking classes and doing a lot of reading because I always did and still do. I lived on the fifth floor of a walk-up and had a dog named Lottie Lou Miller. I was young and dumb and doing the best I could, and every single time I looked at my poor foot, bare but ouching, nothing, nada, nyetski. But, it hurt. Not all the time. I was busy. I forgot about it, until it began to hurt again even if I couldn’t pinpoint the time and place of that ‘again’.
My shoes. I was wearing, when waitressing, black flats that weren’t great, but weren’t the worst of the many pairs of shoes I owned. I was often auditioning in rather high heels, because the 1980s were about big hair, high heels and dresses in bold primary colors with shoulder pads. I thought at the time that maybe it was the high heels on concrete that were the problem? Made sense only – ouch.
Once, years before, I’d had plantars’ warts. Glenda Keator had borrowed my sneakers for gym on a day when I was out sick, and she had plantars’ warts and then I had them (I’m still a little pissed off at Glenda, TBH). And, because I was who I was (and am) I let it go until the entire ball of my left foot was all planters warts and I couldn’t walk without pain and a discernible limp. The idea was to ignore it until it went away, because I could not miss school. I could not! I did, however, eventually, because it was noticed, the limp, and whether it was my mom or my dad, I don’t remember but there was a foot doc in town and yep, she’s got planters warts all over the ball of her foot, Dort.
And I did miss school, which was awful, a few days as the doc began the process of removing the warts, which to describe them best I would say were like large, living callouses whose roots dug deep into my flesh; the first procedure included knocking me out in order to cut and cut and cut. After that, weekly visits to cut what had been missed (ouch), and a bag over my foot over bandages and no swimming for you, kiddo. It was the beginning of summer, and I was devastated.
Fast forward, I am twenty-four or five and I finally think to myself, maybe it’s my shoes, the soles are worn unevenly or something? Because it hurts, the ball of my right foot hurts, and thank goodness, there is not one eensie weensie ickle bit of plantar’s warts or anything else on my foot but?!! I examined all of my shoes, including, finally, the flats I wore all the time to waitress in – okay. At first I didn’t see it. The soles were black rubber, and there was – nothing, right? Oh, shit. There was a nail in my shoe. A black, 1/4 inch nail. No wonder my foot hurt. Hey! Guess what? The problem was not me myself, not in me, not in my foot as it were, it was something outside myself. It was a nail and lord knows where I picked that up, but once it was gone – and it took some effort to dislodge that sucker, ahhhh, relief!
We can – I can – pride myself on being damnably healthy as a horse (odd, that phrase, because horses are quite vulnerable, prone to disease and ill health), strong and determined, having perfect attendance or ‘working through the ____ (fill in the blank hurt or disaster or illness)’, having a high tolerance for pain, always pushing including pushing to far, ignoring the obvious, the nail in my shoe. This insistence on a view of myself that is strong and healthy AF is a strength, I know, yet it is also, paradoxically, an Achilles heel as I can and will and have let things go, failed to pay attention to my own very real hurt and pain. This skill that allowed me to survive my early life, and makes me strong to this day in a real way – it can be a nail in my shoe.
