After twelve days of being on crutches, I’m officially over this one-legged life. Granted, at my parents’ house, it hasn’t been that bad; they’ve been awesome about helping me out. Dad, will you bring me breakfast? Mom, will you plug in my phone? But now that I’m house sitting for some friends, I’m all alone and have to do everything for myself. (Harrumph.) And whereas it’s going well–last night I managed to successfully get into and out of their hot tub AND shower AND navigate their stairs–everything from bringing in the morning paper to transporting my coffee cup from the counter to the kitchen table is a big damn effort. You should have seen me moving their trash can from the street to their garage this afternoon.

Hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

This afternoon I went to the hospital to get a copy of the MRI I had done earlier this week on my knee. This should probably be a daily requirement for me, to get out of the house, since it forces me to get dressed, interact with others, and not feel sorry for myself. And y’all, interacting with others is EASY when you’re on crutches that have been decorated with holiday tinsel. (The ones in the photo above are the ones I use INSIDE, since the decorated ones are kind of “messy.”) But seriously, all sorts of strangers talked to me today. Oh, I love your crutches. How festive! Now THAT’S making the best of a bad situation.

That’s me–always looking on the bright side.

Along with the MRI images (which came on a CD), I got a copy of the radiologist’s report, which described my ACL has having been “disrupted.” I assume this is the medical term for “fucked up,” and a quick Google search seems to confirm this. When I first read the report, I thought, Oh good, that’s better than a tear, but no–I don’t think so now. Disruption is apparently a serious separation. Like, think earthquake.

Think my life.

Here’s a random picture from the MRI images. Naturally, I have no idea what I’m looking at here, other than some part of my knee. But I picked this image to share because I think it looks like the face of an old man–see the two eyeballs? Also, I think it looks like something from outer space, like two black holes, an entire mysterious universe just below my left thigh. Granted, it’s an entire universe that’s currently–um–disrupted, but hopefully we can get things put back together soon.

Fingers crossed.

Another thing the report said was that I’d been experiencing constant pain since the time of my injury. This isn’t true at all, and I assume it’s just a medical “hiccup.” My chart at my primary care physician’s says I have “anxiety” even though I don’t, I guess because I see a therapist. Oh well, shit happens. But my point is–yippee–I haven’t actually been in pain. All this disruption, and yet it’s not AWFUL. Granted, it’s inconvenient, and earlier when I misstepped on the stairs and came “this close” to tumbling all the way down, it was terrifying. But mostly this ordeal is simply causing me to slow down, take better care of myself, and reconnect with the good humans around me (and that includes my parents). And that’s a good thing.

To be clear, I’m worn out by this disruption. The last fourteen months have been FILLED with sickness and disappointment, and my knee injury is just one more thing. But I do feel supported–if not by my leg, by my friends, family, and my therapist. The last time my therapist and I talked, she said, “Everyone who goes through this process of personal and spiritual growth walks through hell–and by that I mean every circle of Dante’s Inferno. But the reward for walking through hell is a level of generalized contentment that most people never experience.” And whereas I have some proof of this being true based on my personal experience, I’m largely trusting her experience that things are going to get better. (She hasn’t steered me wrong yet.) This, I think, is a reason to keep going, the idea that entire universes may fall apart, but they can also come back together again. Perhaps even better than before.