Guilty Pleasures

I'm a highly organized individual and within the week-end the essential items had their place in my home.

All that was left was a dozen boxes of unessential items. These were to get a special treatment. Every night as I was coming back from work, I would fix a quick meal and do what I would call a "fast forward".

As I was lying down for the first night of my life with a painfully sprained ankle, what now seems aeons ago, my mind was racing. I was already feeling then that something had to change. My way to walk, to move, to live, was to be bended forever.

For a while I fancied myself totally unable to move, with numb and lifeless limbs that could only be lifted by someone else. Paralyzed with only my neck barely able to move around. Slightly on to the left, slightly on to the right. I imagined my plump yet firm body, softening gently in a wheelchair. One of those big bulky wheelchairs that move with a sip-and-puff system and loaded with a number of strap-on bands to hold you straight in. It seemed pleasant somehow, but something was amiss in that vision of my future self.

Movement was missing.

From the beginning, movement was paramount to my happiness. I needed those slow-motionned and almost painfully clumsy gestures. I wanted to feel my limbs reluctantly do what my brain was telling them to. I wanted weakness and resistance. The odd medley of a disobedient body.

Lying in my bed, the pain pulsing in my ankle, I proceeded backward : extracting my imaginary self from the sip-and-puff wheelchair, giving back my fingers some latitude, I surrendered to a hand-controlled power chair and a heavy set of braces that would help my back straight and strengthen my arms. The vision was rather pleasing, although, if felt too easy. The wheelchair was tempting, but I needed to be the kind of person who won't sit if something else is possible. And that's how I knew that someday a fully-braced future me would be roaming around in the street, bent on a walker and fighting for each step on her weakened legs. Pausing for breath every few feet. And sometimes wiping her forehead, or adjusting her neck brace with a curled left hand. That was me. That was the real me.

But I needed to be sure, because there was no going back. I knew that from the start.

For now, it is safe. I have a walking stick and a slight limp. If I were to change my mind I could just pretext that the disease has stabilized and that physical therapy has done the trick.
So, to be sure I'm playing "fast forward" every night.

Tonight for example is the last box : I took my crutches out and my knees are slowly failing me. My ankles are long gone and my feet only stay in line with my legs thanks to these braces. My left hand is also letting me down, I can't fully open it by myself, I need to spread the fingers with my other hand.

I have emptied a box of empty flower pots, vases and other ornaments onto the table and I pick them slowly one by one. I secure them with my right hand, inside the curled fingers of my left, then grab a crutch with my strong arm and slowly stroll around the house trying to find the best spot for whatever I'm holding.

The process is slow and I am savoring each step, each movement of the crutch. My left foot really doesn't feel like moving anymore and I am basically dragging it on the floor, gaining my balance back  on it with a move of the hip.

I love it. I've been doing this part for two nights in a row. I think that's how I'll be in a year and I might stay this way quite a few months.

Tomorrow, I'll get a cam-walker delivered. Filling in the empty pots with flowers will be delightful.