But this is simply not the case. I can’t expect the poor thing to suck it up and go along without me guiding its process of healing. That would be rude.

As instructed by my amazing doctor-man, the walking boot came off after two weeks, which by my calculations was the afternoon of this past Monday. The first step was an awkard one, the front of my emaciated and atrophied ankle buckling under the hefty pressure of its host (let’s face it, sitting on your ass does not a svelt girl make) but I caught me and took my first baby steps as a 41 year old over-acheiving derby chick with more self-aspirations than is necessary but fuck it – you only go around once, right?

Immediately, a Facebook update: “WALKING!”
Immediately following, a text: “Hey No-H, wanna go for a walk?”

(side note: i have a nickname, “No-H” because i’m one of several sara/hs on my current league and former practice squad but the only one without an aitch.)

And so of course, I squeal “YES!” through the responding text message and off we went, walking Greenlake about 1/3 of the way and back making my first outing-on-real-tootsie about a mile. After which we went directly to the natural grocery store to buy nothing I needed but I wanted to feel the cool breeze of organic peaches without being crippled and over-dependent.

Day Two on the new foot found me walking to and from the bus stop and then to and from Greenlake again to get dinner with my pessimistic 16-year-old charmer for burgers.

Day Three and I’m at work in comfy Nike flip flops with a cloud cushion packing up my office and listening to my Cheap Trick station on Pandora. And the thing feels alright.

I am quickly moving forward, beyond the confines of a break to all-out “Hell Yeah” so I can have my action back. My coach asked me yesterday when I was skating again, everyone is asking me when I’m skating again. I will not know until Monday. In the meantime, I just want my leg to catch up with the rest of me because we’ve got a lot of shit to do.

But what do I really think? I think I broke my leg on April 15th, had surgery April 21st, got in a cast for five weeks ten days after surgery, had a walking boot for two weeks after that and now I’m walking without anything but a gentle Pimp Limp and no pain. So I think I’ll be slapping boots on these puppies by the end of July, I’m hoping.

And as I always welcome the opportunity to be dead wrong about that, I’ll survive with a “Um, No, Sara. Not yet” from Dr. Watt. I’ll live.

I’ve stopped asking for help, excepting rides to work, which really isn’t even serving me since I can work from home just as easily. In some ways it’s for my sanity; I haven’t much wanted to be at home lately, as all I tend to do is eat, play internet games, and watch movies. Pretty unproductive and when you consider I’m semi-mobile with a walking boot, that’s pretty pathetic.

Oh wait – I did spend two days cleaning my house. That was the most exhilirating thing I’ve done in awhile.

But in some ways it was easier being stuck on the couch managing pain. Now that I CAN move, I’m more impatient than ever.

I spent the weekend watching “Battle on the Bank” – banked track roller derby’s annual competition and while it was great to watch, it made me frustrated. I guess this is why I’ve been shying away from practices. It just pisses me off to not skate and I find myself thinking about who I’d like to hit the most when I get back on the track – in some ways taking out aggression, and in other cases challenging skaters I want to learn from. I’m ready to be a chew toy for the track again.

Alas, it will still be awhile. At least two more weeks before I’m driving and doing Physical Therapy and then we’ll see. That stubborn fibula is still broken and until it’s right as rain, I wait. I look forward to next week when slip on my skates just to feel them; sit on my couch and roll back and forth back and forth. All I want is to feel them on me. The weight, the familiarity.

(I’ll be good, I promise.)

Being patient is not something I’m used to. Yet here I am being forced to accomodate my irritation, having to keep myself in check every five seconds to avoid doing something I shouldn’t. And then I go back to the night of the injury; that usually shuts me up.

Or I think about the many (too many) injuries right now, and wondering how many is too many before I stop and do something else. Conflicting perspectives, I’m probably just punchy, waiting for all of this to be overwith so I can move on to the next step. Moving back to California? Getting a new job? Switching leagues? Thinking out loud again? No bueno.

I’m walking. Stunted, but this is the third day of new pressures. My leg is unsure of this new activity. She’s resisting and drooping under the new demands. She’s hard, stiff, unforgiving. She doesn’t work right, her foot can’t bend forward and whines when asked to move side to side, up and down. The new hardware is awkward but not ill-fitting. The bone is still broken, and slightly attracted to the tibia, which is called “Plastic Deformation” but the plate is keeping that attraction at bay. I balked at the sight of the break, and realized what the doctor meant when he said, “It’s not a race to get you skating again, it’s a race to get you skating safely.”

My patience is wearing thin, however. I’m starting to feel myself not care so much anymore. Not in a sad way, but in a “eh, I can do something else…ooh a mountain!” kind of way. Like that dog in “UP” – SQUIRREL! But I know I love skating, I know I love roller derby and I for the most part it’s fun being a part of a league, however socially bizarre it can get (it’s a sociologist’s wet dream; why am I not using this experience to my advantage?); derby leagues are petri dishes.

I’m easily distracted, is all. Summer’s coming and I find myself consistently homesick but know I have unfinished business here. The kid has to crawl through high school and get settled, most importantly. Then, who knows, maybe I’ll settle in a fishing village in Newfoundland for a year and see what the air smells like from the Northeast, just to shake things up a little bit. Or maybe I’ll open up that hot dog cart in an artsy beach town on the North Coast somewhere. Settle into the woods and sink my toes into new roots. There are always new things to find and new people to meet and new things to experience. I’ve been here too long. Five years is making the hair on the back of my neck stand tall and my palms are moist with tension. I want to see what’s around the corner.

Ah, but here I am, wounded and captive in a boot. For the next almost-two weeks, I walk bound in a boot strapped up to my knee as I limp toward wholeness. Then one week without it, then a check in. The doctor man thinks I’m driving in less time than that; perhaps driving myself to my own appointment as he snaps new pictures of my healing leg and sends me off to a Physical Therapist to get this thing working again and working well.

I think I might be more excited about driving than anything else. It is freedom. I can leave the city, the state, the country even. Hit the road and get distance from the last few years of this job where I’ve grown bleary eyed and confused, questioning my career path and a billion other choices that led me to this spot.

For now, I heal heal heal. Just knit together, old bones. Just knit together already.

See, here’s the trick. When you break your leg, the most important thing you can do is acknowledge it and move on. Immediately. Don’t freak out. It’s just a broken leg and you will survive it. There is no reason to have a pity party, let the pain get the best of you, or be around anyone who wants to give you a sympathetic hug with puppy dog eyes and tell you all about themselves when THEY did whatever THEY did. GET HARD. Set up boundaries with barbed wire. Keep people away with a penchant for mania and drama. Use social media for FUN ONLY. The second you feel like posting some pathetic missive about how depressed you are, sign out of Facebook and read a Realbook. Lift your leg a lot. Don’t take pain meds if you can hack it. Own that shit – the pain is yours to master. It’s all in your head anyway, and the best thing about getting through serious pain is that you DO get through it. Just when you think you can’t handle it anymore you find yourself white-knuckling it to the other side.

Watch a lot of movies.

Document everything by blogging or journaling.

Make a list of shit you want to do and shit you don’t want to do anymore.

Congratulate yourself for a solid injury. A broken leg is badass!

When people want to do simple things for you, politely refuse their offer and do it yourself. You’ll feel better about it and it’s a really good way to figure out who’s normal and who’s mentally unsound. When someone is offended by the fact that you don’t want their help, mark them off your list – remember, keep the crooked minded at bay. You don’t need to be around the Debbie Downers. You’ve got enough work to do getting through the serious pain of a badass injury.

Recognize the difference between sympathy and empathy. Hang out with the people who have EMPATHY for you. Sympathizers tend to enable your pity party and then talk about themselves. They’re self-servers and don’t really care about you but they do apparently still need to talk about how bad their injury was. Remember, it’s not your job to take care of anyone else but yourself. However, be able to listen closely enough to discern if they’re offering you sound advice. Some people just take a long time to get to the point.

Get a solid crew of helpers and have a conversation with them to clear the air about your asking for help. Make sure they’re committed to your well-being and grocery shopping and don’t be an asshole about calling them. You have to accept the fact that you can’t do 90% of the stuff you did before you became immobile. With a crack crew, you get to avoid feeling sorry for yourself because you have people that will simply show up.

Don’t underestimate the power of Safeway delivery.

DRINK A LOT OF WATER.

Relax and be nice to yourself. Don’t worry about your diet. Eat the fried chicken and ice cream. Food is your friend and you deserve it. You can worry about shedding the extra pounds later. Besides, you’ll be the only person who notices the slight weight gain anyway.

If you’re on a league, work your ass off for them. You can’t practice and chances are you don’t much want to go and sit watching practices, so spend time studying your rule book, going to the bouts, watching derby on YouTube and diving into your committee work. Your league will love you for it and you’ll stay plugged in.

Listen to a lot of punk rock. Unless you didn’t grow up on that stuff in which case you’d just be a poser so listen to the hardest music that you actually enjoy.

Seroiusly – find the joy in your break. It has never been my experience in the last 47 days since my break that I’ve been bummed out about it. There are so many reasons to be grateful for a serious injury. Write a list and believe it. Don’t accept this as a bad thing, because it’s not. You will learn more about yourself than you had ever imagined. You will discover things you didn’t know existed about you. You’ll have hours to contemplate – take advantage of those moments and cherish them. This is why you need to do yourself the good turn of staying far away from people who make a big deal of your injury. These people probably want attention. Your injury is a big deal but it’s not a big SAD deal. It’s not a big HORRIBLE deal. It’s a big deal that you get the privilege of getting through it without succumbing to depression or hopelessness. Those are useless feelings. I promise.

Grab it and OWN it.

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.

So I wonder how long I’ll do anything because I can’t seem to stay dedicated to what interests me at any given moment. This is not something worth struggling over. I’ve accepted this piece of who I am and embraced it. I’m “too old” to question myself about anything. I don’t like to complain, gossip or whine. When it happens it’s time to pause and hit the reset button and remember that at the heart of anything I do has to channel into staying the path of recovery.

Work is crooked. Derby is awkward. Home is blissful. My retirement plan hasn’t wavered in years – back in California, on the coast north of the Bay, growing wild flowers and making goat cheese. Maybe writing for a living if I can, or continuing to teach online. I want it quiet. Chaos throws me into a negative space I thrive on and stay sick in. Self-Check-Ins are always rough; when you think things are a certain way and the trajectory is in a particular direction and you’re forced to stop and take stock of This Moment, the clouds often part and reveal truths about your surroundings you may have been ignoring.

There are people better adept than I at avoiding emotional pitfalls. Me, I seem to have to just avoid environments altogether, which is embarrassing when people ten and fifteen years younger than me seem to dodge those bullets with great ease.

What happens to an unsettled soul with no host to call its anchor?

I woke up yesterday and chortled even before I breathed because I realized my leg was still broken. At least I haven’t lost my sense of humor.

At work, I finally felt no pain. It’s gone. I am eleven days away from a walking boot and while there are aches and these are hints of things to come as I learn to walk and skate and drive again, the pain is gone. It just sort of … happened. Suddenly I realized that the severe pain that had been slowly dissipating over the last few weeks, and the complete exhuastion I’d felt from the simplest of chores has left me.

I am now faced with a softer body already in need of repair and a dreaded set of insecurities of my ability as a skater and my willingness to get from point A (couch muffin) to point B (solid derby hopeful). As someone who has never been fully committed to physical change all the way, I am doubly challenged by my new limitations. Will my patience change? My level of commitment? My ability to challenge myself? Will my recovery continue to threaten to be an afterthought?

The reality of this injury has not lost itself on me. Contrarily, everything is in its place, everything is as it should be. Even the crooked bits. The physical parts of me that are misshapen, the extra hardware that I’ll keep forever sway the wonky bits in my head and the imbalance isn’t only physical. I imagine the future holds mindful challenges of doubt and frustration, disillusionment and sadness. Troubled by the future of what’s to come but comforted by my uncanny ability to embrace ambiguity, I press on because there’s nothing left to do.

Should I allow this reality to weigh too heavy on me the burden will be ridiculous. Better just to Suck It Up and fightt through it. Continue to enjoy the lessons learned – even and especially the lessons I don’t know I’m learning just yet.

My second wave of this experience is upon me. I no longer manage the pain with no assistance because I am no longer in pain. Now, I’m irritated by my limitations. For the next eleve days as I feel less and less dull aches, I imagine the challege will be in wishing I could do what I can’t just yet.

How does that go? Wish in one hand, shit in the other and see what fills up first? The meaning of that phrasing leaves me baffled but I think I’m supposed to not bother with wishing for anything because wishing for what you don’t have only makes you want it more. I’ll be working for my action.

Break leg.
Shrug shoulders.
Decide quickly there is no way out.
Surrender.
Get frustrated.
Refuse to be depressed, angry, frustrated or in need.
Become depressed, angry, frustrated or in need.
Ignore depression, anger, frustration and need.
Smile and convince yourself that being broken is a gift.
Believe that. Make it so.
(That part is true, because I still wouldn’t change this for the world. Talk about an opportunity to get to know yourself and your limits!)
Hold head high and do not ask for help.
Find yourself in need.
Ask for help and be completely out of your comfort zone.
Do not admit defeat.
Find and interesting truism about yourself: That it’s easier to pretend everything is awesome when it isn’t because if you say things are not awesome when they aren’t you look weak.
Annnnnd, scene.
(Thank you.)

So here I am, admitting defeat. Slight defeat, not total defeat, but defeat nonetheless. There are things I can’t do. A broken leg sucks. It hurts and everything is difficult. I hate asking for help because I’m stepping out of my comfort zone and that makes me feel vulnerable and naked. Swallowing pride is not something that comes easily; I’d rather eat paste. Yet here I am, over a month in and with another month to go before some semblance of normalcy creeps back in and while I’ve settled into it and while I continue to see the positive in all of this it don’t make this any easier.

I know I will look back on this and appreciate the experience; as in anything I’ve ever gone through, I am learning more than I could possibly imagine. This happened at a critical time in my life. I get to stop and think about what I want to do with the rest of my life. Continue to teach? Still attempt to work in Educational Administration? Quit the whole deal and open a hot dog cart on the beach? Flee to a commune? These are all options and it’s nice to have options. The options are limited only by my imagination and I’ve worked hard to exercise that privilege.

My bones knit together, sewing up new possibilities and creating a newly formed leg which will make me a new skater and which will make my recovery process bold and new. My needs are different, I’ll have learned to break down and ask for help, I’ll have learned a new sort of patience with myself, I’ll have learned to be patient with others and I’ll learn to be happy in new and interesting ways.

These lessons are only starting to be learned and I’m not sure I even know the realms of possibility when it comes to facing down the beast that is my inflated ego. As much as I think I need to hang on to it, I realize it’s also my consistent downfall. I can convince myself of anything, talk myself out of anything that I’m too scared to do. After all, wasn’t my addict self always waist-deep in anger and fear? That petulance ruled everything. I was afraid of meeting new people because I already convinced myself I hated them. I was afraid to try new things because I convinced myself I’d be no good at it, I was too busy for it, or it just wasn’t worth it at all. I know that in addiction, I’d have never done roller derby – I’d have convinced myself I wouldn’t be able to do it, and I’d believe myself.

Fear, rage, an inflated ego…these are the things I’m trying to leave behind. But they’re all right here in front of me with this injury. Every day I have to battle these things. Fear that I’ll annoy the people I ask for help from, fear that I’ll inconvenience someone, anger that I can’t do anything I think I should be able to, anger that I’m slowed down, pride that prevents me from admitting defeat, an ego that is shellshocked from being ignored, then fear again that without my pride I will be unable to pull this off, and then back to surrender. I AM pulling this off. And, what. There’s not a thing I can do about this but sit here and wait for this precious cargo to heal and heal well.

Pride fucks with you. The trick is not letting it get on top of you.

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….”

31. It looks magic, doesn’t it? Like it should have pink and gold streamers flying from its tips and give off a scent of dew dropped grass and a strawberry after a baby has taken its first bite of the summer’s gift. It helps, I think that Seattle is at an all-time sunny high, tipping the scales to 70, our warmest since October. The flavor in the air is sweet, no matter how you look at it.

And since I seem to do it all the way live all the time, my regular life outside of Leg Break continues to be large. Some time ago I stepped down from a Big Job – a Deanship at my college – to be a prof again. To teach Sociology and to hit an old rhythm that allows me a different sort of life, one with a little more time, a little slower pace and less room for bellyaching. Second to that decision, I stepped down from my Programming Directorship for a film festival I’ve been running for five years. Some things, you know, they run their course and this was my opportunity to take the “Seinfeld Exit.” With changes such as these come some degree of freedom and emotional mobility.

See, the trick to everything is to stay on top of your own desire to attend a pity-party for one. I find that when I start feeling like my soul’s escaping it’s time to do a life check – what am I doing? Am I happy? What choices have I made that led up to my current state of affairs? Clearly, the three Big Things going on right now – broken leg, job change, film fest ending – are resultant of choices I’ve made and are the fault of no one else. Things run their course and shit happens. If you play roller derby, you’re going to get injured and the degree of severity depends on nothing except chance. Skating with someone who skates dangerous? Then get out of the way. Not ready to skate with the Big Kids yet? Then work on what you need to until you are. We all take chances and when I broke my leg – I think I mentioned this some weeks back – I shrugged it off and thought, “Okay then. My turn.” And now it’s out of the way and I’ve somehow mananged to not let my frustrations last more than a few minutes at a time. What’s the worst part of injury? Forgetting your sweatshirt downstairs. This whole thing is a luxury problem since derby is a privilege and the pain is a gift.

Stepping down from two positions of leadership is also life-altering. It took a lot of time and energy and effort and deep thinking to come to the conclusions I did. I imagine it’s neither ethical or even legal to talk about the reasons why I left each position but one could read articles in something like The Chronicle of Higher Education and read about adminstration woes in higher education and put two and two together; the details of my story are not important, nor are they unique.

Life choices after 40 seem to carry more weight and the need to slow down and experience life on life’s terms seems to be that mid-life thing some might call a crisis, but I call an opportunity to gather more steam.