When I was a child I was a dancer – ballet as taught by the British Royal Ballet with exams every year. I was a fair dancer – not excellent, not terrible – but I loved the movement and grace and music. When you are a ballerina, even just a fair ballerina, you learn to dance on broken feet.
As a teen, I migrated from dancing to running, but never as a team commitment beyond high school. I ran for myself, much as I had danced for myself. I still run when I can, and as a runner you run on injured feet. Same concept.
If you do not know me well, you will not be aware that over the last few weeks I have had an enormous set back. After almost nine years of living with serious recurring headaches from my TBI, other symptoms graciously lying dormant, the other symptoms suddenly decided they were ready to make an appearance.
I had forgotten what it feels like to lose whole days from your memory. I had forgotten what it feels like not to be able to find a word at all when searching through a vast vault of years of speaking. I had forgotten what it feels like not to be able to walk, eat, sometimes merely see. In one word – “terrifying.”
I did not survive this alone. So many friends and neighbors, loved ones. Jug’s and my VMF family literally saved my life. Then, my parents came, still being parents after four decades, from Tucson.
Today is the first day I can even really string sentences together across a page, but I’ve had many days to contemplate what I’ve wanted to say. What I want to tell you is that though I didn’t expect this to happen at all, I’ve been told now to expect it to happen again. That news felt like I was swallowing the Earth. Absorbing it sent me crawling under the bedcovers to cry. Today, that is still the reflex. Then, I want scream, “When does enough become enough?” And I don’t want to do this anymore. Sounds a lot like self-pity, no? To me, too.
I never asked for this injury; no one ever does. But if we are lucky enough to recover in a meaningful way, eventually we hear the strains of the music, scratchy and dim, flow from the record player, and we have a choice: dance or don’t. My feet broke a long, long time ago, and over the years, they have healed and then broken again. Each time I am offered that choice – get up and dance, or stay down. Each time, His hand has pulled me up, and, though at times I’ve felt the stage dark and empty, truly, I’ve never been left to dance alone.
The Unexpected Life 