It’s after midnight, and I just finished my third set of rehab exercises for the day. Phew. It was a little tough to squeeze all three sets in today, since I did a lot of running around. Well, limping around. My left knee still doesn’t allow me to do a lot. I can walk, but not fast. Still, people keep saying it really is amazing that I’m no longer on crutches. Personally, I’m over it, ready for this nightmare to be finished. Every day I wake up, slog my way through my rehab routine, and pretend this isn’t my life. Then I go to bed, wake up the next day, and discover it still is.

This afternoon I helped a friend take down their outdoor Christmas lights, and you should have seen us. A senior citizen and a crippled trying to bend down and unwrap a string a of lights from around a tree trunk. We used every curse word we knew. But we did it–we did it! We even made a trip to Walmart for a storage bin, and I managed to not only get in and out of their low-riding car, but also drag my bum leg halfway across the store and back. My friend suggested I use one of those little scooters, and I said, “I do have SOME pride left.”

On the way home from Walmart, my friend and I stopped at Walgreens to pick up anti-inflammatories for me. (I forgot them at Walmart.) Then we grabbed some fried chicken and took it back to their house for dinner. There we laughed and laughed. I don’t even remember about what. I just remember that for a while, I didn’t remember any of my problems.

That was nice.

When I left my friend’s, I met my other friend Bonnie, and we went to see a movie–Mary Poppins Returns. Ugh. Talk about a delightful show. I laughed, I cried, my life was changed. Stop everything you’re doing and go see it now.

There’s a big dance number in the show called Trip a Little Light Fantastic. And whereas I spent the entire song jealous of all the dancers with working knees (that bend and everything), it really was glorious, about how things are always darkest before the dawn and how “if a spark can start inside your heart, then you can always find the way.” This is honestly the hardest thing, hanging on to hope when all the evidence in your life would suggest you do otherwise, keeping your chin up when you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.

I don’t mean to sound glum. At last night’s theater party, I congratulated a friend on their good year (they’d said they’d had one on Facebook), and they asked how mine was. “Terrible,” I said. Later I thought, It wasn’t all bad. Some really lovely things happened. Funny how we classify our days years as good and bad when they’re really a mixture of both. Still, it’s obvious that some days and some years are easier than others. Maybe we fall in love, get a new job. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Or maybe we have our heart broken, lose our job. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after.

Personally, I don’t mind saying that last year sucked. I was sicker than I’ve ever been, broker than I’ve ever been, and alone as I’ve ever been. Oh, and just before Christmas, I fucked up my knee. And whereas I really wish I could tell you that I’m now on the other side of all this terror, I can’t. Am I making progress? Yes. Is it over? Not at all.

In my Facebook memories today, there was a quote by Stephen R. Covey I shared years ago–“You can’t have the fruits without the roots.” And that’s one thing I can say about this piece-of-shit last year. I grew some serious roots. Despite all the above-ground nonsense, maybe because of it, I now feel more grounded than I ever have. I’ve confronted everything that terrifies the crap out of me, and I’m still standing. Mostly on one leg, but still. And sure, I want the fruits, the outward signs that things are going my way, that this is my year. But roots first, fruits second, that’s what Stephen said. Plus, in the movie tonight–and I don’t think I’m giving anything away here–the day was saved literally at the last-minute. So you never know what life has up its sleeve. You never know when help is on the way. At some point, the dawn has to break. Jack and Jill can’t tumble down the hill forever.

[As an interesting aside, according to Wikipedia, apparently some of the earliest versions of the Jack and Jill nursery rhyme were actually about Jack and Gill, two boys.]