I'm starting this post from The Burrow. The sun is setting behind a staggering of branches and twigs and trunks of skeletal trees, gleaming a soft orange yellow in the distance. Boy has gone off to play soccer, and I have the next two hours to write.
I haven't had a shortage of time to write lately. I just... have been diligently avoiding writing this post. This blog has become one of my best tools for processing life. The confusion, the wonder, the hurt, the romance.
And right now, it's taking a lot of courage and more presence in my heart and my body than feels comfortable to write this post.
I'm sitting on the fluffy brown couch in the burrow. A large brace encases my right leg, from hip to ankle. My legs are elevated on two pillows, and an ice bag rests on my knee. My right foot is nearly as cold as the ice, as the circulation has been limited due to lack of movement and huge amounts of swelling.
Two crutches lean against the arm of the couch to my left. Both wrapped in thin fabric I used to hang from the ceiling to create soft corners in harsh rooms. My father said that my fabric collected dust and cobwebs, but soft oranges and greens and burnt prairie yellows billowing from corners made me feel safe. Comforted.
Boy dutifully, lovingly placed my jug of water at the foot of the couch. Along with my bowl of fruit, cough drops and tissue. I wished I'd thought to ask for a cup of tea before he left, but my mom will be arriving with soup in the next half hour or so, so perhaps I can ask for tea then.
Those three seconds.
I know it's unhealthy, but I can't keep my mind from going back, time after time after time, and beating myself up, down and all around for making that stupid decision.
That stupid decision that landed me here. With a fractured knee and god knows how much damage to my tendons and ligaments.
I KNEW that jump was beyond my edge. I knew I couldn't land it. WHY? Why didn't I just skirt around the edge like I'd done before?
I went skiing with Boy's family last weekend. As I mentioned last year about this time, Boy's family dominates the slopes. They're all incredibly competent skiers, and navigate trees, moguls and cliffs with ease and, dare I say -- enjoyment.
Me?
I just pray that I'll get down the mountain in one piece. Enjoyment doesn't even factor into the equation. At the end of the day, while others may be celebrating the good time they had, I'm just thrilled to death I didn't die.
But I really wanted to explore a third thing with Boy's family. Something we could do together. So I went skiing. So I went off that jump.
So I landed. And immediately felt afraid, so tried to slow down. Which made me fall backwards. My knees tangled, and I twisted slowly and painfully to meet the snowy slope.
My skis didn't pop off.
There have been very few moments in my life wherein I've experienced such vast, shocking, permeating pain that I didn't know if my body could contain it.
How can a human body feel this much?
I screamed. But only a fraction of what I felt escaped through my scream. The rest coursed through my veins, saturating my body with fear, panic, pain.
Boy and Boy's family rushed towards me and removed my skis. They called for a sled. My leg was put in a splint and I was wrapped into a yellow cocoon and pulled down the slope by a women whose name I forget. She kept asking me normal things like, "Where are you from?" "How old are you?" "You ski often?"
Normal questions felt clunky and out of place.
I was put on a ski lift and carried to the top of the mountain, still bound firmly into my yellow cocoon. Once on the other side, the woman skied me down to the first aid station, Boy and family trailing close behind.
Each bump. Each second of traction that pulled my boot back from my knee on the downhill slope. Each moment of excruciating pain made me wonder,
What does this mean? What if I can't teach yoga? What if I have to quit massage school? What if I will never be able to use my knee the way I did before?
Wondering became too painful. I shut it down and just gazed at the clear blue sky as I was whisked headfirst down the mountain in my yellow cocoon.
At the First Aid station, they offered to call me an ambulance. I declined and took a couple of ibuprofen instead. Boy's family carried me into the truck, and we drove back to their rented cabin in Silverthorn.
"I'll get x-rays tomorrow," I told Boy. "In Grand Junction. At my clinic."
We drove back to Grand Junction the next afternoon. My mother had rented a pair of crutches for me, and Boy found them leaning up against the door to our apartment.
Results from the x-ray came back the next day. A tendon or ligament had torn at my bone so intensely that a piece of the bone had fractured.
"If the ligaments and tendons are still intact, then this can heal on its own. However, if anything is torn, then you'll need to have surgery on your knee," the doctor told me. "I'm making you a referral to Rocky Mountain Orthopedic. You'll need to schedule an MRI."
One trip to Urgent Care (my right leg went icy cold. It felt like it belonged to a dead person and was scaring the crap out of me), one trip to Rocky Mountain Orthopedic later, I still know nothing about my knee. Except that I have a fracture and tendons and ligaments could be torn and that I could need surgery and could end up paying six thousand dollars before my insurance finally takes over and pays my bills.
six thousand dollars... that's... that's enough to pay for two years of life on the road. The life that makes me happiest. Two years of life.
I've had to stop teaching yoga at the college, Yoga West and Movement Therapies. I've had to quit massage school for the time being. I've had to write my college professor an email telling him that I won't be in my photojournalism class for a good long while.
All the strategies I devised for making Grand Junction a safe place for me... have been broken. Right along with my knee. And now that what brings me peace and relief and joy has been taken from me, I can't even leave. Because I can't MOVE.
I feel so trapped.
I visited Judy on Thursday. Judy is my old gardening boss who has been through hell and back and freaking kicked hell's ass on her way out.
"I had knee surgery when I was sixty," Judy told me. "It took me a while to recover, but it shouldn't take you so long. You're young and strong. It'll be better for you. And... you need to stop thinking about that six thousand dollars as years of your life. Keeping your body healthy is the most important thing. That money isn't wasted. Maybe you can find a way to feel gratitude about having the money you need to take care of your body when it's hurt."
Judy made me an Irish Coffee. And Judy doesn't mess around with Irish Coffees. Two thirds cup coffee, one third cup Jameson and a mammoth cloud of whipped cream on top.
We drank our coffee and talked about gratitude. I cried a lot, pet her cat a lot and did my best to absorb the stalwart spirit of Judy.
I've spent hours crying on Boy. Mourning the temporary, but heavy loss of so many of my joys. I always tell him through my sobs that I'll get better. I'll find some way to divert my passion.
"I can't teach yoga. So maybe I'll paint more. I can't study massage. So maybe I'll learn anatomy. I can't take my journalism class... so maybe I'll play the piano again..."
Don't give in to feeling empty, Bourget. It's hard to not let empty be all you feel, but try. You've had your moment. You've allowed yourself to grieve -- fully grieve the loss of these loves -- but now think about all the space in your life. You can choose to look at that space and think, "empty", or look at that space and think, "opportunity."
My MRI is scheduled for Tuesday and I'll know the results by Friday. In the meanwhile, I'm going to keep working at the House as much as I can and try to fill those spaces with other, neglected joys. Joys that have been pushed by the wayside because there was no room in my life.
I'll have a GoFundMe account created as soon as I discover whether or not I need surgery. So if you have the means and would like to contribute to my healing, I would be just ridiculously grateful. This isn't life or death. This isn't the end of the world. But it broke my heart to give up my yoga jobs, drives me mad to feel so trapped, feels like hell, and as my father would say, it's a "monstrous inconvenience."
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