Beauty

I've noticed a blogging theme lately. It's in all the blogs I've read throughout the years, including my own. Periods of dark, gloom doom, alone, grasping, waving and drowning. Then -- light! Counting blessings, letting everyone in the whole wide world know how blessed you are so that you can finally feel it yourself. Listening to the rain and realizing that you have every single thing you need; watching children play while reflecting on the circle of life.

Thus, culminating a blog entry in the perfect way a television show concludes with a song. Something that strums softly, with smiles and laughing kids in the background. Something that shows that through adversity, there is hope.

I do this myself. I veer from lamenting to luminating; scattered to centered.

And in between, there is the every day. The heating up of hot dogs for lunch, the pain in your back, the damn bills that seem to come at the absolute worst times. Laundry. Dishes.

My best friend from childhood until now spent the weekend with me. We didn't take a single picture, but we drank alot of wine and made brownies and she did my laundry and cooking. She was my very last "helper" in this long journey, which has seen all four parents and a grand total of six friends in and out of here altogether.

I told her goodbye, and an hour later I began to walk. No more crutches. I am walking awkwardly, but I'm up.

It hurts like a bitch. Muscles I haven't used in so long are stretching and yelling at me, and I'm beginning the countdown to going into the office. I'm taking off my walking boot and staring at my foot like it's something new that's recently grown.

"Hello,' I say. 'Are you strong enough to get me the hell through this day? This night? This year?"

I'm growing stronger, the nights are growing longer, and there is grace, yes. There is adversity. And I sit, in red plaid pajamas, writing it down to add to the words collectively thrown to the universe that all jumble together. Saying the same things, over again, until we find each other -- each saying the words that we already know, in harmony.

It's like a song I know. I've heard it before.

I already know the words.

Alone

I took a bubble bath tonight. This may seem awfully basic, but for me, it represented something HUGE. I took one almost every night before the cast (my own version of b.c.) and tonight, I lowered myself in, keeping weight off my right foot, and sat. I had my first glass of wine in...3 months? Or something like that. Just for the hell of it. I'm ba-ack in a lot of ways. I still can't walk all the way, but I can stand. I can take little bitty steps on my walking boot.

Mom left this morning. She walked out, keeping her distance from me, after 22 days here (by her count). She was trying not to cry. I was in the middle of my "work" day from the couch, so I had to be quick in my goodbyes, and I think she wanted to get out before she had an emotional time of it. I know she feels fine about leaving me in this condition--I am much, much, much better than how she found me! But still. I'm her baaaby. She reminded me of this many times :)

I'm alone. It's quiet. Getting my life back is bittersweet. I'm looking around my apartment, at these walls, as though I don't recognize the place. The place in which I've been stuck for the last two months. I am seeing ME again...finally. Me, on my own.

Look blog...no hands.

Yesterday was six weeks post-op. I start 'sort of' walking next week. My mom and stepdad were here at the beginning, and she's back again. My dad came in between, and my best friend, and two college friends. I stayed at a friends place across town after that, and then Mom came back. My best friend from childhood comes next weekend, thank god, and gives me a parenting break...then Dad comes to take me back to Kentucky for a week. I absolutely can't wait to get my hands on the little kiddos.

The last 10 weeks have been absolutely surreal. The last 3 have seen me gainfully employed from the couch and they are working me to death. This is going to be my eighty hour a week job. This is going to be my introduction to senior management. I'M senior management. Me! Holy shit!

One thing I'm really glad about is that I don't have anyone reporting to me. I'm barely keeping my head above water, and I don't want to have to manage employees...I'm 30. I'm not ready. I'm barely ready to be doing what I'm doing.

Mom is still here, and is cooking and going on walks and watching me work with a look on her face that says she doesn't like how hard I'm pushing myself. It's been really strange being "DC, Professional Me" with Mom sitting on the couch with me, thumbing through the newspaper. Talk about worlds colliding.

I keep trying to think of chilling metaphors and flowery words to describe all of this as Mom helps me in the shower, helps me out of the shower, wraps and re-wraps my walking boot. Hands me a grilled cheese sandwich with a glass of milk, while I pretend not to be as old as I am -- while I'm on the phone with clients, pretending that I'm not as young as I am. I don't know how to be 30. Just 30. I've forgotten how to live this little life I've set up for myself here -- forgotten how it will be without my Kentucky connections here with me.

Did I really put on suits everyday? Did I really actually start a new job? Will this paycheck bounce?

This is so surreal. All of it.

Flashes of gratefulness and depression beyond belief keep coming bright before my eyes. I want my house to be my own again. One second later, I don't want people to stop being here. What will happen when they go? I haven't been alone except for the rare hour or so, here and there, for over a month. I live alone, and am used to living my life almost completely on my own (as readers--all 3 of you--know very well). This is different for me. I want my life back. I don't want it either.

My dad and stepmom came. I started my new job from home. It's intense, and this is going to be completely different than what I was used to in some ways...but that is a very good thing. I'm doing federal government affairs now, so all the Congressional antics that keep playing out on Cspan now suddenly are personal. They dictate whether or not I'm up all night, whereas previously, it was the Governors of the states who did that. And they tended to be much less dramatic ;) Joint debt ceiling resolution? Did anyone pay attention to that? Turns out I should have been - because now my paycheck depends on my awareness of its outcome.

A day in the life. Right now, it begins with my mom bringing me oatmeal as I stumble my way into the kitchen on crutches.

One month ago today...I was laying down in bed, and facing surgery the next day. I'm four weeks and two days post-operation. Five weeks away from this whole thing happening. I still find myself re-playing it in my head. But not once--not once--have I questioned this. I haven't mourned my lost vacation, or thought about all the things I was going to have seen. It never seemed real to me--like the whole time we were planning, we were just playing.

Turns out, we were.

And now it's October. My favorite month ever...and I can't be out in it. I got to go out to my front steps today. Cast on, crutches laid beside me, I sat on the steps and small-talked with people going by. Looked at the leaves that have gotten their colors now. I realized they were starting to do that a couple weeks ago when my best friend was here, before Dad took his shift and my college friends came with kiddos and two HUGE gift baskets of stuff that I'll never be able to actually eat. She forced me outside and I sat there blinking in the bright sun and feeling weird about being outside. She talked on her blackberry and sometimes glanced my way and I alternated between wondering why she'd come and feeling grateful as hell that she had.

Look, I said, pointing to the tree. It's starting to change.

I'm halfway to being able to be fully mobile. I'm hoping so much that THIS, this, is starting to change. I'm working from the couch, watching bad TV and learning my coworkers' quirks from afar, and doing it all without learning just yet where the bathrooms are and what the coffee protocol is in the kitchen. I get a little break, to google things like "proposed rulemaking" in the privacy of my own home while I'm on a call needing to know arcane congressional procedural rules (wake up, I won't talk about procedural rules again, I promise).

I get my cast off on Monday, and I get a walking boot on. I start being able to put pressure down on it in about two weeks--I think--alot depends on what the doctors say when I go on Monday. I think I'll be able to go into the office around Thanksgiving. I need to navigate what i'm going to do about thanksgiving, and Christmas, and and and.....

And.

For now, I am trying to heal. I am taking my vitamins. Multi's every day, extra vitamin D. Lots and lots of milk. Lots of mom grilling me cheese sandwiches. Lots of my dad and stepmom cleaning my house. Lots of my college friends making me mexican dishes to freeze since they're my favorite. Lots of my friends here sending me edible arrangements. Lots of food, food, food it seems like. I can't move! Don't give me more calories!!

It's fall and I've fallen and broken. I'm halfway standing, and hoping for healthy winters to come.

"Three thousand five hundred miles away...what would you change if you could?"

Then there's you

I guess if I needed to learn or remember anything throughout this journey, it's that an awful lot of people care about me. I have always known this, but it's something that I haven't felt in a very long time. It's like I've had some sort of barrier up, or a wall of my own self-centeredness, or a cloud of doubts hanging over my head--to be seen, but not touched. Not felt. Not where it mattered.

My best friend came up to spend a few days with me. She kept her head down, working frantically through her very busy time of year. I felt at times she was a million miles away from me while sitting beside me on the couch. Then she'd turn to me, smile, and ask what I wanted her to fix me for lunch and I remembered. I remembered to be grateful for every card people are sending me; every care package.

Mom was here for two weeks, and my dad is driving here as we speak. I was very glad to have a parent-break of a few days and get my head on a little straighter from so many days of my mother caring for me. I was grateful as all get out for it, but it is easy to regress when you're being actively parented long after you actually require it. I need help, yes, but I don't need parenting.

My dad is bringing with him his toolbox and his guilt about not being here for the brunt of the injury, the surgeries, the doctors appointments. I have no doubt he will absolve his guilt by fixing things that work, and by stuffing my face with things he grills.

I can't wait.

I am certainly not having the October I had planned on, nor that I wanted. I'm in a fair amount of pain still, although it's significantly less. Showering has taken on a whole new level of prep-work, and fixing myself a bowl of cereal and carrying it into the next room? Forgetaboutit.

But, I know, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt....I am lucky still.

Even still.

Well

Life sure as hell doesn't go as planned, does it?

Two weeks ago, I set out for a vacation of a lifetime with an old childhood friend and we were drunk on life and possibility. We were headed for a Mediterranean cruise, and were going to Italy, Greece, Turkey and Spain. We each left from our separate homes, and met in Paris in the airport. We hugged excitedly, headed for the currency exchange, and I pulled out my wallet. A few hours later, my credit cards were gone. All of them.

Sarah left for Venice, and I stayed behind for 3 hours until my flight. I landed in Venice at 11pm, actually GOT my luggage, and headed out to find the cruise reps who were supposed to be meeting me. No one was there. I had no money, didn't speak the language, and the airport was closing. I was making frantic calls and found an old man who offered to drive me to the ship (at least, I assumed that's what he was saying. He DID drive me to the ship, even though as we drove along winding Italian roads at midnight, I realized that he could kill me right then and there and absolutely no one would ever, ever know).

I made it on the ship. My friend and I had a blissful day and a half...until I slipped down one slippery step, and broke my ankle severely.

Severely.

So severe, in fact, that I had to have emergency surgery the next day in Athens, Greece. Yes. That was my sight-seeing adventure in Athens. The medical staff on the ship was wonderful, as I cried and sobbed to Sarah that I'd ruined our trip, her trip, why did my life have to be so hard, ohpleasegodjustkillmenowthishurtssobad rants because the pain was so out of this world awful.

In Athens, people stood over me shouting in Greek, as they took off my clothes and put me under so they could set the break. Two days later, Sarah and I were issued Turkish visas and flown out of Istanbul. We landed exhausted back home to DC, where I had surgery AGAIN last Friday...and here I sit.

In two weeks, I'm supposed to be starting a new job. I'm supposed to still on be on vacation. I'm supposed to be going to Kentucky in a couple of days to see the kiddos. I'm supposed to be able to walk. Instead...I am sitting on my couch, five days post-op, with my mother scrubbing things with bleach water in my kitchen as we speak.  I wish I were writing this with more flowery words, with more emotion, with more life lessons that I've learned threaded throughout...but I have told this story so many times that I am weary.

My family and friends have been wonderful, and I haven't been alone for a second since this happened. Mom's here for two weeks, then Dad comes. Dad told me he got physically sick when he heard what happened -- from a combination of knowing I was in horrible physical pain (pain like i've never experienced) and from the heavy feeling that his child just could.not. seem to ever have it easy. He was so happy that I was finally on a trip of a lifetime, finally able to do something wonderful for myself....only to literally be knocked down and slammed back into hard reality.

I told my friend who was with me, Sarah, that i keep waiting to hear on the news that our cruise ship is actually on the bottom of the ocean. Because we clearly (clearly) were not supposed to be on it. It was almost as if the universe was TRYING to make it to where I couldn't get on board. And once I did, I sure as hell couldn't stay. I laid in the medical center the whole first night it happened, shivering as morphine was pumped into me continuously but somehow not even able to touch the pain. They didn't even set it that night, I had to wait til official surgery for that the next day. It was one of my lowest life moments, I think.

It's just a broken ankle. Just. But it's sure as hell disrupted my life, and shaken a few hard lessons into me. I have four screws and a plate in my ankle now, but I'm expected to make a full recovery. Six more weeks.

If it happened for a reason...I've got my eyes wide open, trying desperately, straining, to see it.

Change

My last day of work is today.

I fly to Italy tomorrow.

Life goes on.

As for the blog? We'll see. Keep writing...I'll keep reading.