Whoa, look at the time...
yes, well, weekly is a bit much, right?
When I decided to create a Substack I was headed into my second semester of graduate school and was feeling pretty great about having a couple more weeks of holiday break to do some writing, get some closets cleaned out. I generally just feeling a little more settled and better prepared than I had when I started my first semester last fall. Then, on a lovely Friday night, after spending some time browsing a local used bookstore with my granddaughter, a young man in a Kia Soul pulled in front of us and literally wrecked all those good vibes.
Fortunately, all the airbags worked as designed and my granddaughter ended up with nothing more than some bruising (and a little anxiety at intersections and a couple of nightmares about car accidents). Unfortunately, the accurate deployment of my airbags broke my sternum and gave me some nasty bruising and swelling and occasional numbness in my left leg that is still resolving itself seven weeks later. Instead of cleaning out closets and getting a lot of reading and class prep done, I spent the next couple of weeks sleeping on the couch all day feeling groggy from the pain meds I was prescribed. Thanks to MLK day and a snow day, I didn’t have to get back to campus as soon as I might have, giving me another few days to heal before having to have my wits about me in front of a classroom of students and pick up a rental car.
All that to say - my plan to write something here every week took a nosedive. Hope no one was too disappointed. I did think about you often, if that helps.
Having an emergency health situation occur as a newly single person is weird. My son was with my ex at the time of the accident, and my ex is still programmed as an emergency contact on my phone, so he got the emergency notification that I’d been in a wreck and brought my son to the hospital to meet us. Rational, mature me was appreciative of the concern, but rejected, emotional me was thinking “Okay, thanks, you can go now since you’ve already decided ‘in sickness and in health’ isn’t a thing you’re interested in pursuing with me anymore.” I made a mental note to remove him as the beneficiary on my life insurance.
How do you navigate the terrain of post-divorce when important things like illness and injury occur? How do you balance the gratitude for concern with the still-present feelings of disappointment and anger? Perhaps you don’t? Balance them, I mean. Why should I worry about them being balanced? I feel off-balance more days than not, so maybe that’s the “new normal” for me. Or, at least, the “now normal”.
That night in the ER, my first inclination was just to not say much that didn’t need to be said. I think it was probably the right move, in terms of future congenial relations. And honestly, I’m not a super confrontational person when it comes to emotional topics. I tend to get all wound up and ugly cry. I should write another post about the stupid thoughts I have about my appearance when I know I’ll be seeing him - as if it even fucking matters. IYKYK
After a couple of hours everyone headed home to their respective homes. Me with my prescription and a new-found appreciation for the chunk of cartilage that holds my ribcage together. Him with our son, and… what? A little regret and worry? Or a sigh of relief that he didn’t have to deal with the replacement of my car and payment of my medical bills? Who knows. I didn’t ask.
So, I’ll be popping in more often moving forward. Hopefully with something more fun to share next time. There’s a lot of good stuff happening, and I can’t wait to tell you about it!
