Last week I tripped outside, bashing my face into the front steps outside our house. Stupid steps, stupid clumsy feet.Thankfully, it doesn't hurt as long as no one touches it. My black eye and swollen face are on the downside of healing. A few more days and no one will stare at me in public anymore. The funny thing is I keep forgetting that my face is messed up. When people give me double-takes, I am constantly surprised by their reactions to me. No one has been rude, just curious. I should have made up a sign saying, "I tripped myself and fell. I wasn't in a car accident, I didn't have plastic surgery and I am not the victim of domestic abuse." I haven't bothered trying to cover it up with make-up. I don't have the kind of professional glamour skills it takes to trowel on enough cover-up to hide this mess.
What has alarmed me much more than my appearance, is the mild concussion I gave myself. I can't get over how exhausted I have been and how desperately I have just wanted to sleep. My memory has also been a joke this week and I have an new appreciation for anyone with neurological illnesses or injuries. I am so glad I am over the worst of that, too.
I didn't think of this until yesterday, a full week of after my accident. I remembered my brother's near fatal assault in Cheyenne, WY and wondered how he survived that. All I had was a simple fall and I have been down for a week. Rex was almost killed by two grown men who beat him with a concrete lawn statue. Where I got a mild concussion, he suffered permanent hearing loss, vision loss and who knows what else, for the rest of his life. I don't know the details of how he was affected by his terrible beating because after Rex was released from the hospital, he didn't talk about his injuries again. I didn't know how much a bruised face and head hurt, let alone the shattered bones that he endured. I didn't know how totally tired and brain scattered he had to be. I am positive I was insensitive, impatient and probably completely horrible in my expectations he return to normal. I can't say for sure because I don't remember anything specific that happened in the weeks and months after his assault. That tells me I didn't pay any attention to it. He survived, he was released from the hospital, he was fine. If I had only known then what I know now!
Like everything in life, if it hasn't happened to you, it is impossible to fully comprehend how someone else feels. I have been humbled by my accident, taught in a new way how fragile and fleeting good health is. I have also been reminded what an extraordinary brother I had. For most of my life I saw him as a burden to endure, an embarrassment to overcome. Now I have another reason to know how wrong I was about him and how truly lucky I was to have him as my brother.
No comments:
Post a Comment