Rehab

I've never thought of myself as someone who takes their body for granted.  I mean, I'm as guilty as the next person of sitting too much and putting more buttery sugar in my mouth than I probably should, but I would say that I put more effort than the average person into keeping the motor running smoothly.

The last three months have been an exercise in understanding both the amazing powers of my body and the devastating limitations.  I had always been cognizant of the risk of injury in a full contact sport where you have wheels screwed to the bottoms of your boots.  I knew one day my number would be up.  And I think most of those around me who had forewarned me and naysay-ed when I first strapped on my helmet and skates felt a small amount of satisfaction to know they were finally right when they heard that I'd broken my ankle.  But I don't think anybody expected that the reason my toes were pointing in a completely unnatural sideways-y-upwards position on April 30th was because my wheels were just a little too sticky as I went over a teensy lip between two different surfaces at a speed that was just a little too speedy while I was trying to slow down a very fast game.  I drink my milk.  I'm not a habitual coffee drinker.  I've always been on the heavy side.  My bones should be invincible.  My fibula shattered like so much glass.

Two weeks into my journey, I was back on my feet.  I had a walking cast for 6 weeks, and though I couldn't drive, or swim, or shower standing up, I could walk almost without a limp and almost as fast as I ever could with two virgin legs.  And after 8 weeks, aside from the super gross athlete's foot and the fact that none of my pants fit me anymore, I felt very little pain in my broken ankle.  I honestly thought when the cast came off that it would be like nothing happened.  Because I drank my milk.  I took my vitamin D.  I walked the shit out of that walking cast.  My bones should have been stronger than ever.  Meanwhile, the muscles around them had wasted away to tiny, inflexible threads.  They expressed their angry fatigue with an almost constant ache.  The fluid that those muscles would normally pump away pooled around my ankle.  My physiotherapist said my strength and range of motion were pretty typical of my injury.  I felt so stupid.

With a sport like roller derby there's a community, and in that community are people who have had similar injuries, so I know there's life after ORIF surgery.  I know that if I stick with my physio exercises and keep pushing myself I'll get back to where I was, and perhaps keep on going.  Every time I look at the hook-shaped scar on my inner ankle I think, "I can rebuild" and do another calf raise, go on another bike ride, stretch another theraband.  I've hired a personal trainer to help get my strength and endurance back so I can come back to my sport with my fists up.  And I'm seeing improvements.  I can almost do a single-leg calf raise with my broken leg.  I can almost point my toe without crying.  I can almost go a whole day without compression socks and not see my foot become a swollen balloon by the end of it.  And those are good things.  But then I think back to those women who've come back from their injuries and see how well they're doing and wonder to myself "Am I working as hard as they did?  Did they feel this pain at this point? Do I seriously have what it takes to come back from this?"  As much as I feel extremely motivated to get back to where I was, I can hear my self-doubt knocking at the back door.  I really hope I don't let it in.

Being Broken

Pardon the hiatus.

I was feeling myself not terribly inspired to write much, and then I broke my leg.  Playing roller derby.  So at least I was having fun.

Because I was more or less indisposed from the time of the inciting incident (a reasonably non-spectacular plough stop over a small lip in the track surface followed by a relatively over-spectacular display of screaming and backwardsy-upside-downy foot in the air because I didn't know what to do with it) to when I got home from surgery two days later, information about my status was transmitted over Facebook by my boyfriend.  Not because he felt the need to announce to the world that I was broken, but because he knew that a lot of people were wondering how I was doing and he felt it was the best way to reach the greatest number of people.

And lots of people reached back.  The outpouring of support and get-well-wishes was, at times, very overwhelming.  But soon after that, I started counting the people that I hadn't been in touch with in some time who were expressing their concern, and I realized that I'm a colossal failure at being a long-distance friend. 

I've come to think of myself as a kind of Madonna (the Like a Virgin kind, not the virgin kind) when it comes to relocating and reinventing myself.  I've taken a number of risks that have necessitated restarting my life from scratch a few times and I think I've been pretty successful.  I haven't been very successful at taking any of my previous lives with me to the next, though there are a few exceptions.

I blame two things.  First of all, I must admit that reinvention is kind of time-consuming.  To be really successful at it, you have to join things and go out with people and hang out with your new friends.  And that's all really awesome.  But it leaves less time than it should for checking in with old friends and asking how they're doing.  Secondly, I don't flatter myself to think that my old friends are completely aimless without me.  They've done things with their lives.  They've joined things and gone out with people and are hanging out with new friends.  And that's really awesome.  And I don't want to impose on that, since, you know...I'm the one who left for different (but admittedly equally green) pastures.

But this is another time that I feel I must be brave.  I suppose if my old friends don't want to talk to me anymore, they'll let me know.  And maybe they're feeling the same way - I'm making a new life and they shouldn't get in the way of that.  That being said, I've certainly welcomed everyone reaching out to me with open arms.  Why wouldn't they welcome me reaching out?

So, like all conclusions, I'm ending with a resolution.  I have friends.  Many friends.  Some are new.  Some are old.  Some are friends that are dangerously close to becoming people who used to be my friends, not because of a falling out, but because of my own complacency.  So I'm going to try to keep in better touch, because you never know when you need a friend.

Being Brave

The original title of this post was "We can be heroes" but then I thought that my fifteen loyal readers might think it was tacky to capitalize on the untimely passing of a pop icon.  I think I was right.

Though, while I'm not writing about David Bowie per se, there's a more than tangential relationship between Bowie and what I'm about to write.

Three things happened this week that made me think about my life (more than I usually do, I guess...).  I know I'm a little slow off the mark on my New Year's Resolutions, but I think it's probably smart to have resolve all the time and not just on January 1st each year. 

1.  David Bowie died of cancer.
2.  A dear friend's father died of cancer.
3.  I had a huge fight with my boyfriend.

How are these connected?  You might not have been asking, but I'm going to tell you anyway. 

When I moved to Northern Ontario to start my adult life, I didn't know a soul.  Not a single person.  I was desperately searching for a boyfriend.  I know it's nice to have some romance in your life, but if I reflect on that time in my life, I think I was desperately seeking someone because I wanted to feel connected to my community.  My search was ultimately successful, but it was not without its significant speed bumps.  It took me several months to make friends (more on that later), but when I did, my friend's father was a great advocate and important navigator of my life in the north.  I didn't know him as well as I would have liked, but he directed my community theatre debut - giving me a shot at a lead role with only my say-so that I'd been in the drama club in high school, gave me my first bunch of tomato plants, and always made me feel like I was a person he wanted to chat with if he saw me around town.  And from my vantage point, he lived an incredibly rich life most of the time. 

Before all of that, I felt like I could die in my apartment and the only reason anyone would think anything was amiss would be my absence at work on Monday morning.  If I squint my eyes really tight, I can remember a time in my life when making friends wasn't difficult, but something happened at some point to make breaking the ice in a social gathering wholly terrifying.  I sought counselling, and by the grace of several self-confidence worksheets, my peculiar ability to sightread piano music, and one strangely successful unsuccessful e-harmony match-up, I had friends!  And for a very long time, I saw myself leading a life similar to the one I imagine was led by my friend's father and that was pretty great, and certainly good enough for me.

And then, five years later, I moved away from my friends and my comfort zone.  So, this week, I had a huge fight with my boyfriend.  The details don't matter, and we've mostly resolved our argument, so that's nice.  But it got pretty edge-of-the-knife at some points.  And I thought of the places I could go to cool off and debrief and decompress.  I could think of one.  And then I felt incredibly lonely.

And it's not like I'm not around people.  I'm a champion joiner.  Problem is, once I've joined, I live in fear that if I open my mouth to talk to someone I'm going to find that I suffer from some kind of sneak-attack dysphasia and all I can produce is word salad, and I'm going to be that weird girl that nobody likes because she says weird stuff.  Instead, I'm pretty sure I come off as that girl who seems stand-offish and unapproachable because she says nothing to anybody and doesn't make eye contact.  My modus operandi is to just be "around" and then eventually I've been around so long that everyone just knows that quiet girl who's always "around" and they're comfortable with my "around"-ness.  And I'm comfortable with them and I can start to be myself...the one who talks to people and says things other than "Hi.  We seem to be in the same place together right now.  That's...a thing." (Truthfully, I probably still say shit like that, but it's delightfully awkward when you know me, rather than awkwardly awkward when you don't.)  But that takes a long time, and I'm really lonely now.  You see my problem here.

So what does David Bowie have to do with all of this?  Well...I'm pretty sure that when I'm being "around" girl, even if I'm quiet and stand-offish, I still seem pretty normal.  And I guess my fear is that, if I put the real "myself" on display, someone's just going to come out and say "Girl, you're fucking weird, and we don't need your kind here."  If I think about it rationally, most of the people I would want to spend time with are probably too polite to say anything like that, and are much more likely to embrace the weirdness.  But in situations where I'm afraid I might suddenly come down with a freak case of dysphasia, I'm not really thinking rationally, so I sort of forget that most people are generally polite in most situations.  David Bowie was the kind of person who was his real, really weird, self at a time when people were not always polite about who that self was.  His appearance was flamboyant and ever-changing and experimental.  His music was flamboyant and ever-changing and experimental.  His sexual orientation was flamboyant and ever-changing and experimental.  He seems to have been amongst the original poster boys for letting your freak flag fly.  And nothing about me is as controversial as anything about David Bowie but I'm still incredibly scared that somebody is going to hate one, or some, or all of my weirdnesses and point it out and make me feel so bad about it that I never recover. 

The lesson that life is short has been reiterated to me this week.  And the outcome of being quiet, stand-offish girl who never speaks to anybody is more or less the same as being that weird girl that nobody likes.  I'm going to be lonely, and that's really not the life I signed up for.  On the other hand, there's a chance that I could be that weird girl that SOME people like.  I don't know what my odds are, but I have a feeling that to win my odds I'm going to have to be a little bit brave this year and let my own tiny freak flag fly.