It’s really odd wearing a right shoe for the first time in two months, under the guiding eyes of my amazing Japanese physical therapist i took my first steps. They were tentative, learning to walk again, something so natural was humbling, I was so vulnerable and focused and scared and excited.
I wrote this a few weeks ago before finally ditching my crutches, I was in a bit of a hole but feeling a lot better now being more mobile, I thought I’d share it anyway and say it does get better…
it’s been over a month since my ATR and i had a moment when i was crutching home along Houston after playing chess with Jane in Greenwich Village. I was waiting at the intersection for the green man while other pedestrians were crossing in the gaps between cars, i waited as i do to both have time to cross and to allow me time to catch my breath which i’m almost always out of. I felt sadness. I realized then that i was mourning my walk, my normalcy, my independence, my freedom. One month, its been so long i feel the beginnings of a fading memory of walking, it’s no longer just ‘yesterday’ or ‘last week’ that i was able to walk, it’s over a month, it’s a medium term memory that you don’t recall with the absolute clarity of something that ‘just happened’ it’s like that person you meet a while ago that you don’t remember until someone reminds you then you say ‘oh yeah that’s right’. it’s makes me sad.
I felt i needed a moment and didn’t know where to go, i’d been in my apartment for so long, i had slept in to 830pm the night before and i had been on zero sleep and oxy’s all day, Nolita isn’t a place for relaxing, there’s no park, no open spaces, no quiet areas, so i went into the church on prince between Mulberry and Mott and sat there feeling a little hypocritical due to my atheism but also quietly justifying it to myself as this is a place for the community. I sat there while people prayed and the organist practiced and the lights went on and off in the confessional and thought. I thought and reflected on what i was doing. I sat there in the quietest place in 10 blocks.
