Day 32 – Welcome to the Dust Ward

One month in and yeah, I’ll admit it. Today it’s on top of me. I suppose after a month of sunny cheer, it stands to reason there will be a day of little patience and a short temper. Maybe it’s also a combination of things coming to a head, as they often do. That’s how it is living life on life’s terms, though. You roll with it, you take the hits, you dodge shit when you can but at the end of the day what you have control over is very little. So, like my break, like my limitations, today’s bad mood is passing.

In my experience the things that get me bent sideways go away after awhile. It’s riding the wholwhip and not snapping that’s the trick. It’s amazing what weird shit can nestle in the crawlspaces of one’s mind after the normal rhythm of life is severely warped for awhile. Even with an end in sight, this is rough. Maybe it’s because although there’s an end in sight, said sight is uncertain. Trying to make plans even a month in advance is choppy. Can I drive? How far? Can I drive safely, slam on the brakes if I need to? Maybe it’s the other stuff – and the leg break is like an exclamation point at the end of a rough sentence.

Either way, it’s good to know survivability depends on the strength of my willingness to move through it and the understanding that they’re just feelings and they won’t kill me. Besides, I can’t afford to lose it. Where the hell would I go? Deeper inside where the physical pain rules? I don’t think so. I tell ya though, this is some damn skippy pain. Even though It’s no longer nigh unbearable it continues to swell and ache and twinge and burn and occasionally sharply remind me what I’ve done. Sometimes I can’t move, sometimes I forget there’s a break at all. It ebbs and flows, as does the rhythm of my ability to hold on to reality. When my focus is released from pain management I’m thrown into the abyss of boredom, stasis, a liminality that teeters on the past and future but can’t get out of the epistemic muck and haze of the present.

Some things I avoid thinking about at all, especially when I think about going back to derby because I have every intention of doing so. Perhaps the logical choice would be to hang my skates up and find something else to do. The rate of injuries are high, although relative to other contact sports I don’t know. In flat track, it’s knee injuries in banked, ankle. In both, there are back problems and sprains. But we continue. I continue. In fact, I can’t wait to skate again, it’s all I think about. Maybe that’s part of my level of distress 32 days into this process of healing. When I do think about skating again, my ankle starts to hurt in a Pavlovian sort of way.

And so I roll out of one day and into the next. The days are switching up for me. I’m now no longer counting the days since my break but the days until I get my cast off – 17 days to go. Then 14 days in a walking boot. So that’s 31 days to a full weight bearing day which puts me at the halfway mark today. Halfway. In the words of Lee Ving, “Welcome to the dust ward….”