Wednesday 25 April 2012

april 25, 2012

now that i'm past the one year anniversary of my accident, a lot of things feel less urgent.

it's not that everything is all better, but i'm okay.

i'm thoroughly okay.

and i'm even starting to accept this new reality of tiring more easily and having to manage varying levels of pain.

i think i'm at the point now where i accept that this saga will never quite be over. i'll need to mend things a little bit at a time; do pre-mending, preventative care and maintenance, and to be gentle with myself when my body isn't working right. i'll need to accept my need for care and adapt. maybe things won't return to the normal i knew before, which, on the physical level, was pretty fucking care-free. but that's okay. things change. things are always changing.

a few weeks back, i mended the jeans i was wearing during my accident last year. since then, one of the patches has come loose, so i'm going to mend it again. this re-mending feels like the work i'm doing with my body: returning again and again to the spots that need care, patiently surveying the damage and trying to figure out how to work with it. a little massage here, a little stretching there, more rest and some advice from a specialist. trying to put things back together...gently, with awareness.

i have a spare pair of jeans that i'm keeping around for my patching needs. so, tonight, i'll cut out a new patch, and...actually, you know what? i'm not even going to redo the whole thing. i'm going to add to the patch that's already there. all i need is a little right angle triangle of fabric to cover the botched part. why not let it all be visible? the layers, the attempts, the re-mends. as a kid of two workaholic perfectionists, this kind of transparency about imperfection comes as a relief. mending, not fixing. i don't need to begin again. just mend what's already there.

there's something about not giving up on these dilapidated jeans that's like not giving up on my body. surviving care of an acceptance of circumstance rather than a fog of denial. i don't want to strive for something that isn't possible. for example, people have been giving me a lot of advice on how to make my scars go away or get my old body back. a lot of movies are made about not giving up on the impossible, but i think that's a setup. most of the time, the only thing you're going to achieve with that kind of shit is heartache.

i accept the patches on these jeans. i accept the scars on this body. i accept my experiences. i am living, and life is never perfect. experience marks us in all kinds of ways some of them permanent. so, here i am: scars and patches and all. on display. and i think i like it better this way.

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