a common injury
I sprained my ankle last Friday. When I think about it, perhaps the real news here is that I’ve somehow managed to live almost 40 years of my life without ever spraining an ankle, but it does mean that in the past week I have learned a great deal very fast about this common injury.
Such as, first of all: how shockingly long it takes to heal. In my ignorance, I texted my friend shortly after my accident to say that I seemed to have done something to my foot, but maybe I could still meet up for breakfast tomorrow? Surely some ice and a night’s rest would do the trick? (narrator’s voice: it did not do the trick.)
I was floored when told that a sprain could take anywhere from a week to months to fully heal. Being in the fortunate position of never having sprained that foot before, and the sprain appearing to be a relatively mild one, it’ll probably be on the faster end of the spectrum for me. Still—it’s been just over a week as I write this, and although it’s definitely better, I am very far from recovering the mobility I used to have. I did manage to go out to eat and buy groceries this morning. What is usually a sub-10 minute walk for me took me at least half as long today and gave me a dull ache in my ankle, plus the strain of overcompensation on my good foot. I think it was good for me to leave the house (for the first time in over a week), and to get some movement in on that ankle, but wow is it ever humbling to walk so slowly now.
Every time something brings me down physically, I find myself contemplating, all over again, what it means to live in a body. And so: a realisation afresh about how it feels to have limited spoons. How exhausting it is just to plan in my head all the things I need to do in the kitchen before I go to the kitchen, because getting up to make that walk is a huge strain, and I don’t want to do it twice. The extra time I need to buffer to do something as simple as getting dressed, because I need to sit down to do it; I can’t put weight on my injured ankle.
But I also find myself wrestling with a different kind of problem, that of the perception that I have been gifted a great amount of free time at home, and if I’m not doing something meaningful with it, if I’m not making the most of it, then I’m wasting it and should berate myself for such wanton insouciance. With a week suddenly freed from the need to go to the office, go to yoga, attend evening engagements or otherwise undertake time-consuming activities, why did I not write feverishly? Why did my writing projects remain as stagnant as if I hadn’t had all this time at all?
Of course, when I write it out like that, the expectation seems as unreasonable as it actually is. Why should I have been writing feverishly with all my free time? If I wanted to spend the time watching TV (this is what I actually did), what’s wrong with that? Why must productivity be the final outcome of any downtime?
Perhaps the real takeaway that is difficult for me to face is: time isn’t the main barrier to me creating work. Lack of time makes for a convenient scapegoat, but this week showed me that when gifted plenty of time, I still wasn’t writing, which means there are other reasons I need to reckon with. Maybe I am simply very tired and needed all the extra sleep I got this week. Maybe I’ve tapped out my creative well for now (after I finished a whole story in March—I don’t want to forget that accomplishment). Maybe there are other pursuits that excite me more now. I find it a little bit painful to have to acknowledge that I am not actually a person who can make herself bang out words on a disciplined schedule, at least not in this season of my life. I was, once. But perhaps there are reasons I am not now, and I don’t think there should be any shame in that. I want to bring a spirit of compassion to the observations I make of myself, and to work with what I have.
I’m fuelled also, always, by gratitude—from friends and family bringing me groceries and checking on me, to colleagues who didn’t bat an eyelid at me not coming in the entire week. I’m so thankful even for the timing of this injury. Had it happened before my Nakasendo hike, or closer to my KL trip, this would have been a much more catastrophic situation, so I’m really glad it happened at a time when I could easily afford to rest at home. There’s nothing like being in a position when you need to ask for help to remind you just how many people want to help and support you. I am so lucky for that.