Day 45 – So close I can taste it.

The hardest thing about having pain alleviated from the broken leg is being this close to planting foot on ground. It’s cathartic, this movement from one level to the next. And as I’ve felt the pain of a shattered limb move through me in waves of panic or moments of serenity, my present state has me experiencing a sort of benign neglect toward the whole thing. I’m trusting it to do its thing without me. I’ve put in my time, weeks on end managing the pain without support, and now I’m done. It doesn’t hurt and I don’t want to talk to it anymore.

I just want to skate again. To drive again. To walk again. I want to put my skates on, to feel a shoe on the other foot, to balance on my right leg, to have the option of leaning. But as I ignore the thing, it screams back at me as it numbs to my chosen position or aches in tiny circumference near my scars. It hits a wall and reminds me its there. It disallows me to forget it.

Four days. Four more days and the cast comes off for a massage, a shave, a scratch. To touch my leg again, to compare it to the left, to witness its comeback as I push it to work hard again, these things I am increasingly impatient for. All the work has come down to this moment, this moment of zen – foot to floor, muscle to bone, bone to joint. Stretching and bending gently and gently until it moves again with vigor.

How do I feel? Void, blank, in limbo. Like I can touch tomorrow but that it’s too far a journey to make. What was easy is now a struggle. What was a struggle is now a serious challenge. But at my core, I’m building up an undeniable urge to skate. Hard. Harder than I ever have, just so I can catch up to where I was before I broke to surpass myself to a new level. I feel as invincible as I do stuck.

If I could walk, I would be pacing.

Tap tap tap…four more days. So antsy I’m going to bed early so I can wake up and say Three Days. A weekend chock full of activity so I can wake up on Monday and say Today. And when I’m placed in a walking boot each step I take will be rewarded in multiples of time that accumulate the minutes between now and my time on the track.

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