in which i fail horribly at walking
I've spent the past several weeks volunteering as a crew member for a local production of "Evita," as well as attending meetings for a future production. Because one of my meetings was the afternoon before a show, I had decided to go into town early, meander towards my meeting, and then explore a bit of the city before I had to be back at the theatre.
It's amazing how quickly plans can go wonky.
Bones dropped me off by a coffee shop and had just pulled away from the curb when the sidewalk apparently twisted away from my foot, causing me to wrench my ankle and fall to the ground.
Walking has never been my best trick.
I struggled back to a standing position. Tried to walk. Couldn't.
Well, hell.
I clung to a wall and tried to figure out what hurt. The ankle absolutely hurt..but honestly? I've twisted my right ankle so many times and in so many ways that generally speaking it doesn't usually phase me for more than a few seconds.
This was something more.
The child that lives in my brain couldn't process what was going on. It felt like I had seriously hurt the muscles in the arch of my foot, making it wicked hard to put weight on my foot. The only time I'd felt pain close to this was when I thought I'd broken my left ankle several years ago. But hey, I didn't want to vomit, so I knew it wasn't that bad.
I frantically texted Bones as I kept attempting unsuccessfully to walk. He offered to come back for me, but I am stubborn and decided I would will myself to be ok. (...The texts Bones received were, of course, not nearly as confident as what I've just written here.)
So I stood, half leaning on the wall, half trying to figure out how to walk again. An older woman walked past me, stopped, turned, and looked at me. I prepared myself for the obvious question she was about to ask.
"Do you know where *mumble* Street is?"
Ok, so I didn't expect that question.
"I'm sorry, I don't have any idea," I panted at her. Disappointed, she walked away.
I took a deep breath and tried to put weight on my foot again. This time, I had better success. I texted an update to Bones and limped to the next open door, which happened to be an old school sort of used bookstore. Piles of books and cigar boxes (?) littered the shelves and floor. I looked around, sorta wanting to investigate, sorta afraid I'd knock things over, sorta wondering why there was no one else in the store.
"Can I help you?"
An older gentleman holding a laptop was in the doorway behind me.
"Um...no, not really. I just...wanted to look around."
He continued to stand there, looking annoyed.
I looked around the front of the store one more time. "OK! So. I....I'll be back later."
He stepped aside so I could hobble-escape past him. I decided this was quite enough adventure for one day, and so I started to make my way to my meeting, where a friend loaned me an ankle brace that helped me get through the rest of my evening.
Of course...of course...my friend Jenny and I had signed up to do a 5K that was scheduled for two days after my latest failure to walk. She suggested we might want to cancel. But, ya know. Stubborn.
Two days later, we headed to Lansing for the Race to Restore. This lovely little event is a fundraiser to help maintain tombstones in Mt Hope cemetery, and the 5K consisted of two loops through the cemetery. (I can't actually explain the expression on my face in the following picture.)
The first loop wasn't bad. I had warned Jenny that we would not be breaking any records today (which is a shame because there were so few of us that we maaaaaybe could have actually placed in our age groups had we not been hindered by my gimpiness). Jenny is a great friend and insisted she wasn't there to be speedy.
Which is good, because on the second loop, my ankle gave out on me and I fell pretty much flat on my face for - once again - no damned good reason whatsoever.
I was tempted to just...stay there for a while and feel sorry for myself. But. There's not much that is as motivating to me as looking up and seeing someone on a walkie looking at me worriedly, so with images of ambulances dancing in my head, I struggled to my feet and pretended I was ok.
As it turned out, now I had a gimpy right ankle and a tweaked left knee...and no medal. :( Our time was a glorious 1 hour and 9 minutes, which is...ridiculously bad. But! We finished. Because I'm stubborn.
The following is a bit of the text discussion between Bones and me:
..And this, y'all, is why I'm not an athlete.
But! I have one more 5K this year, in a few weeks. I may not make my personal best, but at least I'm sure to do better than I did this weekend. :/