Brake Down

– Posted in: Chronic Pain, Dogs, Family, Grief, Holidays, Injuries, Life is Dangerous, Momless, Personal Insanity, Uno
Incidentally, this is not me.

About a week ago, a few days before Thanksgiving, I thought I broke my ass.  I’m not talking in a figurative “I really broke my ass trying to get that blah blah blah finished,” sort of way.  I actually mean broke my ass.

We were sledding — my least favorite “sport” due to its complete ridiculousness.  Skiers can make turns and avoid trees.  Hell, even the knuckle draggers on their snowboards can stop when they fall down.  But sledding?  Whoever came up with the idea of getting on the most slippery thing they could find and sliding down a snowy hill was, I’m going to guess. . . drunk.  How we all somehow came to the conclusion that it was a good family activity, I’ll never know. 

But back to the broken ass.  I was sledding — down a very flat, barely snowy hill with my son — and apparently we ran over a rock.  Which hit just to the side of my tailbone.  Which hurt so badly that I almost passed out.  Until I started puking, which apparently sometimes stops you from passing out (it’s a long physiological explanation).  Which then led to me spending the remainder of my day passed out on pain medication, dreaming about how pissed I was that I’d be missing the entire first month of ski season due to breaking my ass while sledding.

As I was lying on the couch in my non-intubated mini-coma, I did what everybody who has kids does when they’re in this type of situation.  I started planning.  And freaking out.  Now, if you read this blog you know that I’m a fairly messed up person.  Long story short, I’m in pain most of the time, but I’ve gotten good at muddling through and pretending I’m not.  But add on a broken ass?  This led to a small amount of panic, and I was wondering how I was going to survive the next few days with the kids at home and my husband, Tenzin, at work.  Because, if you read this blog, you also know that since my mom died, I kind of feel like I’m out here in the universe all by my lonesome.

As it turns out my ass wasn’t broken.  And I didn’t need anyone’s help with the kids or anything else.  But here’s the weird part, at least for me — I also didn’t tell many people about my butt-bruising sled ride.  Under normal circumstances, my entire circle would hear about what was a semi-traumatic and ultimately funny story.  But I didn’t let anyone know.  And that made me really, really sad.

See, when my mom was still around, we would’ve called her and let her know what had happened pretty quickly after the fact.  For one thing, she would’ve been put “on call” to help with the kids.  Anyway, if my mom knew the story, the entire family and most of her friends would soon know the story.  And then I’d probably feel the need to let all of my friends know the story, if, for no other reason, because I’d have to show my mother that my life belonged to me and not to her (because you can’t have a non-antagonistic relationship with your mother, no matter how much you like her).

But none of that happened.  And while I thought the whole incident had just slipped quietly into the stubbed toe/paper cut category of injuries, it turns out my little slide down the hill was actually just getting the “holiday emotional breakdown” ball rolling.

The next day, I found a bunch of Better Homes and Gardens at the bottom of a basket.  My mom had gotten me the subscription.  Apparently they’d stopped coming after last December, and I hadn’t even noticed.  Every month, for about six months after she died, I’d get one in the mail.  And that magazine — that stupid magazine — would make me feel like she was still taking care of me.  So when I found the last ones in the basket, well. . . let’s just say it’s a good thing the kids were busy watching Nanny McPhee.

The ball kept rolling right into Thanksgiving — a holiday that used to cause a tug-a-war between my family and Tenzin’s.  Now, there’s no debate.  Now Thanksgiving will forever feel like dinner at someone else’s house, where the food, the smells, and the sounds just aren’t quite right.  Like some sort of mistake has been made because the day has passed, but we’ve eaten all the wrong food off all the wrong china and said all the wrong things before sitting down to eat.  Now my “family” is suddenly extended family that eats at friend’s houses because our center, our hub, is gone.

So the ball rolled downhill, unbeknownst to me, until it landed with a “thud,” right on my dog.  We came home from Thanksgiving dinner to find him looking somewhat pitiful.  His back legs, which have been giving him a lot of trouble, were tripping him up.  And he’d chewed away some of the fur on one of his back haunches.  I sat on the ground, hugging him around his huge neck and rubbing his head.  Telling him what a good boy he was.  And, of course, I started to cry.

And then, I couldn’t stop.  All of the broken ass, magazine, Thanksgiving garbage rolled down the hill at the same time.  The way I was carrying on, you would’ve thought that — well — someone had died or something.

The thing is, sometimes life’s a lot like being on a sled.  No matter how hard you try, sometimes you just can’t make it change course.  Sometimes the brakes just won’t work.  Sometimes you’ll end up with a broken ass.  Or a broken heart.

Which unfortunately, unlike the ass, doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of healing by ski season.

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6 Comments… add one

trydefyinggravity December 2, 2010, 6:50 am

I am so so so with you.
there will be no snarkiness with this reply. I know how it feels to think things are going ok and then to be smacked by the reality that you are missing the one person who would make it ok.
I'm sorry. Sometimes you gotta let that ugly cry out even when you don't want to.
alysia

Wombat Central December 2, 2010, 1:44 pm

((hugs)) Thought you could use a couple. And maybe this award will help:

http://postcardsfromoblivion.net/2010/12/you-may-now-call-me-the-stylish-wombat/

Kristy December 2, 2010, 4:25 pm

A cautionary tale for sure. I will not be sledding this season.

Dena December 2, 2010, 8:40 pm

Ugh. I can imagine your meltdown, oh, too well. But I want to make a comment on your chronic pain — this was a 3-in-1 blog for me as I bopped around to old blogs to learn more about you. Did you already know that gluten is a common cause or exacerbator of many, many illness including fibromyalgia? Also Epstein-Barr, schizophrenia, autism (as you know), celiac (of course), acid reflux, but it has nothing to do with imbalance/poor direction in sledding.

PartlySunny December 2, 2010, 9:33 pm

@trydefyinggravity: It was definitely ugly.

@Wombat Central: Thanks for the award. But mostly just thanks for giving a damn.

@Kristy: Seriously, if I had a dollar for every person I knew who'd been injured while sledding. . .

Dena: I'm sorry to report that we already put ourselves through the gluten-free thing. My husband, at one point, was absolutely sure he'd discover the recipe for decent bread and make us all rich and famous. It never happened. But we did make some nice pasta. But seriously, it's sad to say that if there's a treatment out there, I've probably been put through it. I should probably blog about it. It's kind of amusing, in a sick sort of way.

She Said December 3, 2010, 2:01 pm

I'm sending hugs your way. < <>> I wish I had some insightful thing to share, but I'm too much of a mess right now myself to offer anything worthwhile. So, I'm sending you hugs.

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