Thanks for being here on my post-surgery adventure.
While I’m far from the finish line on this recovery journey, I’m reaching the point where I can look back on challenges of the last few months—as you’ll see below.
If you’ve been reading along, you already know that navigating public spaces has been among the biggest challenges for me in the last few months.
I consider myself fairly introverted and not particularly social, but this recovery journey has had me itching for additional human contact, especially as being around other people goes from something scary to a source of sustenance.
In the last week or so, I’ve entered a phase of recovery where I’ve developed a newfound appreciation in seeing people and slowly re-entering the world. Below, you’ll find a few things I have to say about the transition of the last four-and-a-half months, in which seeing people has gone from a thing of fear to a thing of joy.
The Joy of Socializing
It’s Day 142 Post-Op and this Substack post is coming a smidge later than usual due to embracing something I haven’t been able to have in months!
Walking. In public. To see people. To be around people. People!
People I’ve never met before. People that I haven’t seen in months. People I’ve never met and will never meet but are out in the same space, enjoying the same serene Sunday morning.
Today, being among people on a weekend morning in early fall, wearing a pair of low-heeled boots (not sneakers—a first!), and sipping a coffee was a long-lost joy.
When you work from home, live in the suburbs, and the only socializing you really get is with your partner, your pets, and your physical therapist, going out in public is a miraculous, refreshing thing.
Fear of People
Early in recovery, I was afraid of people. Ironically, much as I wanted to be around people, I was extremely afraid of them:
When it came to people I knew, I was afraid of them seeing how bad a shape I was in: limping around, needing to hold onto them in case my leg buckled, and physically as much as mentally diminished. Out to dinner, I was fearful of getting up to go to the bathroom and anxious about traversing from the entrance of a restaurant to a table. You couldn’t take me anywhere with my slow pace and lack of confidence in my ability to move through spaces with other people—and I while I had nothing to be ashamed of, I was ashamed of my friends seeing me this way.
When it came to people I didn’t know, I was afraid of them running into me, disregarding my poor mobility, inattentively breezing by me, heads craned over smartphones and expecting me to move out of their way—but I could never move for them. Instead, I was stuck like a deer in headlights, a sitting duck, desperately wanting to avoid a collision but, unable to move well, relegated to trying to move to the side or standing in place to “weather the storm” of stampeding footsteps.
Being around people was to put myself in a line of fire among strangers and mild embarrassment among friends. Aside from select events and a handful of visits to my jiu-jitsu gym to watch class1, I strove to avoid people entirely for the better part of the last four months.
The Loneliness of Recovery
It was easy to avoid people while having a burnout-inducing, work-from-home job, and with how difficult it was to simply walk around the corner, let alone from the couch to my desk.
Recovery is an inside job and a lonely journey—and this is true even when you’ve got friends who are willing to keep you company and a care team determined to get you back to health. Being in public, you feel “other-ly” and alien, not quite like the rest with your brace, your peg leg, and the accommodations you need to get from Point A to Point B. And it’s a mindfuck because, above the waist, you’re normal—physically, at least. Mentally, is a different story, as the world around you seems to be defaulted onto hard mode, the most innocuous things—shopping carts, curbs, driveways—turned into dangerous obstacles, standard errands turned into excursions.
Life feels like a game of bumper cars, and even if no one is going to intentionally bulldoze into you, it feels like they are. Your sense of personal space is altered. You wish you had a bubble or a “police line: do not cross” banner to surround you so that you can safely move through the world.
Rediscovering Spontaneity
In the last few days and in the next few weeks, I’ll be continuing to “come out of my cage.” I’m slow, but I’m mobile. My left knee, in certain ranges of motion, still feels like it’s clogged with kinetic sand. I can’t hop or run yet—still trying to clear the milestone of eccentric loading and getting down the stairs without “thunk-ing” my way down.
But the biggest gift of the last few days has been a long-lost thing: spontaneity. To get out in the world, feel the wind on your face, and be around people and nature is a gift. It’s the most precious thing there is—and, better yet, it’s as free as it is priceless.
Closing out
Let me know what you’d like to see here in the coming weeks!
I’m still many months away from being able to start jiu-jitsu again and explain what a “return to the mats” looks like, but now that I’m not in a really stunted, depressed spot where I’m limping visibly through the world, there feels like there’s less to write about.
Please write back drop some comments with suggestions on what you’d be interested in hearing more about or what’s resonated with you so far! It helps this writer a lot.
Have an awesome week,
EZ
Those visits to class were also hit-or-miss interactions when it came to being around people. There are a lot of wild children zooming around the facility. Even while calmly sitting on one of the benches, I had to be cautious that none of the kids would cartwheel or kick or otherwise come into contact with my leg while engaging in their usual shenanigans. Being around the adults had its own hit-or-miss character. I’d often get considerate and caring questions about my recovery, when you find yourself hearing same question for the umpteenth time, you get tired of answering it again. On a handful of occasions, I got some questions that were tone deaf, but fortunately, those were few and far between.
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