There is No “Other”

So I got asked after talking about my injury “other than that, how are you?”

There is no other. There is only always. There is only that constant limit, not only to your mobility but also to your energy.

Unlike derby, where you can walk away from it when it gets too much, you can’t walk away from your injury. You can’t take the cast off for TEN minutes just to be able to rotate your ankle or stretch your leg. Everything, EVERYTHING is a fight and a hassle and a chore.

And it’s hard enough if you’ve got a partner you can lean on. I’m trying to figure out how to do all of this alone. And it sucks. My skater friends have enough to worry about with derby, they don’t need me bothering them. My Nero friends, well, that’s a complicated mess, right up there with the even more complicated mess that is my relationship with my boyfriend.

I just want to cry and scream and hide from the world. I want to be able to take a bath without being terrified of falling. How exactly do I ask for help with that? “Hi, can you come over and hang out in my living room while I take a bath?” I feel so scared and trapped and stuck and angry and frustrated.

And then, when you do screw up and fall, the world looks at you like you’re brain damaged. I fell at petsmart getting Eddie’s food (the store manager was so nice to do all the lifting and carrying for me), cause they’ve got polished concrete for their floor and I apparently found some dust or a slick spot. Down I went, right onto my left knee (the bad one), though that’s better than going down on my left foot. So one of the bystanders ever so helpfully told me that I needed to get something with some traction for the bottom of my cast. This is, mind you, while I’m still sorting out how bad the knee is. I know she was coming from a good place, but that was entirely unhelpful and really fucking condescending. Last time I checked, I sprained my foot, not my brain.

And then there’s my newly complicated relationship with derby.

So yeah, right now, I’m pretty low. Not at the bottom (been there, not going back), but definitely lower than middling. And I’m only one week in. 15 to go.