No Apologies

At odd times I wonder if my writing’s too foreign, so you cannot even relate, since I always use strange phrases and speak of experiences that make no sense, even with your deep imagination. When I…

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Bodily Grace

After two weeks of hanging out at home nursing my broken leg, I decided it was time to venture outward. I was missing other humans and the city.

A friend with her own broken bone experience behind her mentioned that most box stores will lend out wheelchairs for free if you ask. So I thought, why confine myself to a single store when I can have a whole mall?

The closest one to me, Dufferin Mall, also happens to be the least pretentious of the downtown malls. This is the mall where you could walk in — no puns intended — with a couple hundred dollars and leave with most of it still in your pocket; in other words, a shopping experience aimed at the demographically unfortunate, such as myself.

The activity of people walking in every direction, the shrieking children and the too-loud boutique-store music — all of the mall elements that usually send me running the other way, (probably best to ignore all figurative references to healthy leg movement from here on out,) were now welcome signs of life, of being a part of the global bustle.

After getting out of my taxi, I used my crutches to hobble right up to that customer service desk and borrowed my very first complimentary wheelchair.

The staffer stuck my backpack in the mesh pouch in the back and explained how to use the chair: push forward to move forward, pull back to go back. And to turn, roll on the side opposite of where you are turning. Simple enough! But God, did my arms start hurting not even two minutes into my excursion! The strength it takes to pull your body weight forward through space is something that would take a serious getting-used-to.

With a sip of juice from my water bottle, I was off. Off was slow and arduous, but I was moving, on my own, and my legs were comfortably at rest.

I had a sense of glee considering the possibilities. Where to first? Discount Birkenstocks? Thai food? A tablet case from one of the tech kiosks?

But very quickly I realized that my strength to move this thing was not unlimited and I had to ration. I had to choose just a couple of stores and I needed to plan my route.

It was somehow important to appear confident in this contraption: probably because shrinking suddenly to half my regular height feels infantilizing. Turning around was out of the question.

What was ahead? Soft Moc: okay. An acceptable shoe store.

With my spirits high, I started in. The huge display right in the middle of the entrance left me with two barely-passable pathways but I chose the left and committed.

It was strange to take up this much width. On regular non-broken-leg days I tend to be hyper-aware of my body in the public environment. This is not a point of pride but girl-child socialization is very real. We are taught, early in life, to accommodate others and this becomes your own need that is difficult to unlearn.

So most days, I am glancing up from my notebook or behind my shoulder: am I in your way? And, oops, I’m sorry! Excuse me, please. And so on.

Surrounding people did automatically move out of the way of my wheelchair but that’s just it: they moved out of the way of my wheelchair, but not out of my way. They allowed for the space and, in the strangest way, simultaneously completely ignored me. It felt like they were stepping out of the way of a big file cabinet rolling toward them in slow motion.

I flashed some quick smiles at passers-by, too — another annoying female habit — but nobody reciprocated.

I must’ve spent a good twenty minutes at Soft Moc, trying to muster as much dignity as possible while pulling sandals off shelves well above my head for a closer look.

Normally, I hate salespeople coming up to pester me. Today, I wish someone had offered me help.

After surveying the entire bottom half of the store and realizing that neither of the clerks would initiate contact, I continued on and slowly, carefully, back-and-forth, turn by miniscule turn, maneuvered through the little pathway and out of the store, around the other side of the main display.

That was just bad luck, I told myself. It’s six in the evening on a Tuesday; this is a busy shopping time. It wasn’t personal. I would try Forever Twenty-One.

I pawed through some cheap-looking shorts laid out flat on a shelf. I saw some cute rompers but quickly realized I was nowhere tall enough to look through the hangers to find one in the right size. All the while, other shoppers were passing me by with the same blind look. No one made eye contact, not once.

It could’ve been because they did not want to consider what pain or discomfort or unjust circumstances I might be in. The wheelchair had no identifiers and for all they knew, I lived in it. Maybe they didn’t want to introduce feelings of pity into their shopping routine. Or maybe they thought it was the most polite thing to do, to ignore me.

But whatever the reasons, it made me feel small. Even though I had twice the girth inside this thing, I had no presence and no voice.

At the next store, a supplement shop, the clerk did speak to me and brought me the protein powder I’d asked for. But I had to practically yell to make myself heard across the vast divide of the cash register between us, also too tall.

Leaving this third store, my arms ached hard. I used my last bit of strength to wheel myself over to the one sit-down restaurant on the premises: Swiss Chalet.

The host did notice me and I got a table right away, even though it was the one closest to the door and entirely in the middle of every waiter’s flight path. He seemed pleased to point out that I had a good view of the muted television showcasing the latest local news and weather.

And the question that took me years to learn to answer comfortably — “Just yourself today?” — was never uttered.

I knew that with a bit of effort, I could stand on my good leg and move over to one of the regular chairs at my table. But I was curious at how this goes. How does it feel to have your lower half be attached to a chair at all times?

I am half woman, half chair. A wheel-woman, a mythological creature. Disturbing, misunderstood. Beautiful and mysterious, and also hoping not to spill any coffee during the long journey via the chasm between the surface of the table and her face.

I’m a klutz. There are no more doubts to this fact. I’ve never heard of any young or young-ish person breaking her leg in, not one, but two separate sites on her way from a temporary futon mattress on the floor of her mother’s-in-law apartment to the bathroom following an innocent Sunday afternoon nap.

I’ve also never heard of anybody breaking a leg just two-and-a-half years following a pretty serious, equally freakish head injury from — you guessed it — another very mundane, very insignificant-seeming fall.

There are several reasons that spring to mind when I want to explain why I’d never developed any bodily grace.

As a child, I gained too much height too quickly. I was taller than my friends and I was taller than boys. Sometimes, I was even taller than my teachers.

I am 5'7, by the way; in no way even tall enough to attempt to model, but I was already this height at age twelve and it never quite fit.

Then, just as I began, finally, feeling somewhat at home in my mortal coil, I had to be medicated.

I was in my early twenties, at the peak of my drunken dancing and reckless cycling phase — and, as it often turns out, at the peak of my depression phase, as well. I was hurting bad, for various reasons that are better left quietly forgiven, and I was prescribed the strongest medicine yet: Abilify.

My then-friend/current spouse Jones and I laughed about the name. It was like a dumb ironic pun; like some medicine for a superhero, or at least a comic book character.

It was technically an anti-psychotic and it did the trick. I calmed down a bit. My life had settled a bit. But I started to gain weight and I didn’t stop.

I went from being a touch underweight and religiously eating instant noodles to having to replace my wardrobe every six months because nothing fit. The bigger I got, the more awkward I felt — and again, I wasn’t graceful to begin with.

There was more of me now. More to carry around, more to fit. More to relax, even. More to move.

This happened all too quickly, too, and nobody prepared me for it.

My doctor instructed me to eat better and exercise, both practices I loathed.

I did try, though, every now and then. But as long as I was taking Abilify — and I still believe it was worth it to save myself from my otherwise-crazy brain — I kept gaining weight. The chemistry was against me, in that way.

Just before slipping on the ice that February in 2017, I made the decision to get off the meds. I was majorly overweight and I could not reconcile the image I saw in the mirror with the body I imagined myself to have.

It was five years later and there were no more endless strings of frustrating first dates or broken hearts out of left field. I was married to a pretty great guy now. Life was more predictable, in a good way. I had done a shitload of therapy and learned to meditate. I was grown up a bit. It was safe.

So I did get off the meds. But then I fell. And something in that jello bowl that is my skull silently, invisibly, inexplicably to this day, had shattered.

The way I think of it now is it was like shaking a bag of Scrabble tiles to shuffle the letters. It was random but my brain had to re-settle. Re-configure. Re-calibrate, in a way.

I had just turned thirty and my body felt more alien than ever. I was constantly light-headed or exhausted or painfully irritated. I shook uncontrollably upon hearing sudden loud noises.

The changes were slow and small but eventually, over time, they added up.

This particular summer, I was looking forward to getting back on a bike. Going out into nature, too: maybe strolling through a forest outside town or swimming in Lake Ontario.

I was feeling infinitely grateful that my body continued learning new things, could still adapt, even while my mind had given up hope. I marvelled at this.

My life, for a brief moment, actually became more normal than ever. I liked myself now, more than ever. I knew myself better.

But I waited too long to rent that city bike. And now, look at me: lying around all day with my right foot stacked up on top of a tower of pillows, typing away on my little keyboard.

When the four weeks are up and I’m pronounced healed, I hope I remember what I saw with my own eyes today at Dufferin Mall. How curious and strange it felt to be discounted by others, to be dismissed, to be mobile funiture.

I don’t know what the answer is. All humans equally deserve dignity but I am as bad as anyone: I forget this truth.

There has to be a balance found somewhere between complete blindness to otherness and fawning over it or suffocating the person.

And how about when we can’t see the injury in question? A couple of the shoppers I saw today might have had post-concussion syndrome just like I did: silent and insidious and maddening. And many more shoppers I saw, I imagine, could be navigating a crazy brain phase, just like I did: and they could’ve been feeling only four feet tall without any wheelchair.

My hope here is that we try to show compassion to one another, wherever we go and whomever we encounter each day. The golden rule still stands: treat others how you’d want to be treated, right?

And my other hope, sometimes a more challenging feat, is to show compassion toward myself. Most everybody else has a monkey on their back, too: whether showing or invisible, whether temporarily or always, whether it’s managed or denied.

It’s good to see people.

No Apologies

Bodily Grace

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