Posts Tagged isolation

It was the day I had anticipated, even before the surgery; the day I would come out of my cast and take my life back. Having spent two weeks locked within the confines of my own walls, seeing the outside world through limited squares of glass; the same view each day, changing significantly given the time of day or night I happened to look out.

I refused to take the medicine, preferring a clear head to an ease in my pain; at least for this day. I emerged into the world canopied by ancient oaks, and the air, though warm and heavy with humidity, felt good and inviting upon my flesh. By the time I made it down the steps, across the walk and to the car in the drive, the first wave of nausea began to assail. Out on the road my head started to spin until I rested my chin on my chest, forced to close my eyes.

Everything familiar; sights and sounds, I had not been part of for so long, yet it went on without me, without any change. Only I was different in this realm; my mind, my body, my thoughts and my purpose; having little to no effect outside my own walls.

A humbling, if not depressing realization, when ones reach gives the illusion of being so broad.

Hours later the cast was removed, my leg no longer my own; as if it were not an extension of my living body; foreign, limp, vulnerable, weak and painful in its numbing healing. And the tears came hard and fast. For I had built up my hopes, created my own beliefs, that I would walk out of that office, my life once more my own. But it didn’t happen like that; didn’t even come close.

And so I sit propped against my pillows, darkness outside my windows; crutches always by my side, leg elevated at all times. Restricted in every way, a new cast worse than the first; more painful, more confining, urging healing of a different manner. Pain in different places, nerves coming back to life; sending lightening bolts of electric heat careening to my toes.

And as I sit, I ponder and I wonder…what in the world was I thinking? Feeling sorry, completely helpless, wanting just my life back; screaming inside my mind, what the hell have I done?!

Then the phone rang and I answered; the voice on the other end never having before called me. “How in the world did you know it was me?” he said. “I’d know that voice anywhere” I answered; my grandfather reaching out from the other side of the world, to see how I was doing. And I realized in that moment that my reach is broader than I could have imagined, and comes to rest in all the right places.