Quarantine Diaries: Week 1 – LOVE

Wednesday, July 1, 2020 – 9:49PM

I honestly don’t know where to begin because it’s been a long time since I wrote anything stream of consciousness, with no prompt or purpose, no polish or flourish. It’s just my words and the page and it’s terrifying. I can’t hide behind hours of editing and re-working, the priority of this promise is different from curating an immaculate essay. I miss the diaries I used to keep as a child, inspired by Amelia’s Notebooks. I miss spending hours coming up with my stories and illustrating them on paint, I miss my Xanga entries and my Tumblr diaries and all the other mediums I utilized to accomplish one thing: writing every damn day.
Something I think about often is someone who used to inadvertently bully me out of overwhelming insecurity. She was kind to everyone but me, the nice Southern girl with impeccable manners who would smilingly sneer at my overly loud, overly honest ways. Every comment was a veiled insult, every insult was a veiled projection of constant comparison. She was the smartest girl in her high school, the most well-read person in her tiny town. She called herself a writer and was unnecessarily assertive about her talents. She would complain about how exhausting it was to hone her skills and how she was trying to write “more” and how forced it felt. I said, shrugging, “I write every day.”
I still remember the disbelieving bulge in her eyes, asserted by the doubt in her tone as she repeated, “You write every day?” I shrugged again.
I had nothing to prove and I was used to her rejecting everything I said out of condescension or contempt. From that moment forward, she vowed to write every day and I thought nothing of it. She was forcing herself to meet a standard she imagined I set but I wrote to keep sane; not to nurture my ego. I couldn’t sleep unless I wrote. I couldn’t relax until I emptied the overwhelming thoughts into another vessel. This wasn’t a competition and it wasn’t a chore. I couldn’t remember not writing every day and I have the notebooks and laptops to prove it.
I don’t think of that girl, I just think of that conversation. I just think about the person I used to be when I now feel this intimated by what I love to do; my fingers feel this stiff and my tongue this tied and my mind this blank and my heart this full of doubt and my mouth full of excuses. My friends always buy me beautiful notebooks, the requisite writer’s gift, until I had to publicly request that they stop because I had a house full of gorgeous, but empty compositions. Whenever I plan to write, I just reread all the things I’ve already written until I lose myself and my wavering will in a spiral of nostalgia and comparison.
I’ve now become that girl “working on her craft,” forcing herself to write every day, and this person feels unrecognizable to me. Is this growing up or have I just lost my touch? Do I still love what I do or am I clinging onto an identity out of familiarity?
I don’t question that I love to write but I question how I’m no longer capable of writing out of love, rather than deliberate intention.
I think I took my earlier passion for granted, like high school athletes who used to practice twice a day or dancers who trained professionally, until we all reach adulthood and leave behind the past-times of our adolescence. We open our eyes; suddenly 28, with a beer belly and creaking knees and a back pain that won’t abate, wondering about the versions of ourselves we failed to recognize as fleeting.
Part of returning to myself, to becoming someone who feels familiar, is writing every day. Humbling myself; conceding, struggling, flailing, grasping, growing.
I’m taking this time to rediscover the parts I love about myself.

Thursday, July 2, 2020 – 5:49PM

I’ve always been weird with numbers, my alarms set to 5:27AM or 4:49AM – never rounded to increments of 5 like a normal person. I find it meaningful I started this entry the same minute of the time I started last night, even if at different hours. I’m too tired to try and decipher what exactly it might mean; running on 4 hours of sleep but still going for a run before the sun came up because it’s the best time to avoid the leering men and sweltering heat.
Everyone insists Bali is “the friendliest place in the world,” but I’ve grown to resent all the grinning men on scooters honking their horns as they drive by; the repeated yelling for my attention from the men inching by on the garbage truck that happened to be moving at the same speed and trajectory as I tried to run on.
At some point, I’ve outgrown the pressure to smile demurely when men are “just trying to make conversation.” I remember writing in my journal when I lived in Boston; drinking gin and tonics alone when a group of fucking revolutionary war reenactors just got off work and insisted I join them in karaoke and when it finally became clear I wasn’t playing hard to get, that I actually meant it when I said I wasn’t interested, they proceeded to curse me out because it was my fault for fishing for attention by drinking at a bar alone and sending the wrong message.
I spent hours reading every single message in a thread about the UC Berkeley rapist who preyed on over twenty Asian girls; he himself being a nice, Chinese-American upper-middle class student in a Patagonia jacket. I read account after account of his aggressive behavior towards women and how he justified it by saying, “When women say no, they really mean yes because they want it but don’t want to seem slutty.”
I’m so tired of not having my words taken seriously. Of the emotions I feel being invalidated, or of being judged by fragile men nursing their egos when I don’t want to smile or make conversation. Who dictated this decree that we all have to smile politely and answer your asinine questions? Why the fuck are men so nosy? And where the fuck do they get off, being so old and ugly, and asserting themselves into the conversations and comfort zones of young, pretty women?
There’s a sense of entitlement that comes with a penis – the right to demand conversation, attention, validation. The right to run in the morning without fear of being trafficked by the few silent men watching you move in the otherwise dark and empty streets. The right to run in the middle of the day because you don’t have a street full of shirtless men screaming at you as they drive past. The right to run in the evenings without being scared of the drunk men stumbling home.
I’m not going to run tomorrow because I’m tired and I want to sleep in, but I’m not sure I’ll run the day after because today was so uncomfortable. I want to be able to walk around in my own skin and not feel uncomfortable; constantly watched, constantly cornered, constantly bothered. I envy the men who walk in with a newspaper and drink a whiskey before noon without a second glance. But then they make eye contact with me and I realize I’m not envious at all. I pity them for being so unevolved with their head nods and meaningful glances.
They have no idea what women are truly capable of.

Friday, July 3, 2020 – 9:57PM

I just woke up from a 7-hour nap after attempting to get writing done earlier today. I’ve been getting up before the sun rises every day; to run, to workout, to be “productive” even if my anxiety keeps me from falling asleep at a reasonable hour the night before. Today, I couldn’t keep my eyes open as I sat before my computer and struggled to process my thoughts into words, so I listened to my body and finally slept. I get anxious when I fuck with my sleeping patterns because I thrive on regularity (like having breakfast at 7AM every morning, like giving myself 2 hours before I have to do something or be somewhere so I end up not being late, like scheduling every hour of my day on my phone and constantly reorganizing my to-do list as the day unfolds and inevitable complications or delays arise).
I texted my best friend as soon as I woke up and she made me laugh when she said, “That’s not a nap, that’s called sleeping.” And it was funny but also struck me that what I was doing – running on 4 hours of sleep almost every day, out of this self-induced pressure that if I don’t live up to certain measures of productivity, I’ll be doomed to failure because everything I’m trying to do already feels “too late,” was more akin to a “nap” than my body’s basic right to restful sleep.
I didn’t remember to write until now and I’m glad I did because I came to a few realizations while attempting to commit my thoughts to the page.
I’m still making this about you, instead of making it about me.
I’m so conscious of an audience, of this eventually being read, that I’m not allowing myself the room to truly be vulnerable, honest, or anything less than articulate.
In the way my body is breaking down in ways I didn’t realize because of the pressure I put on myself, my words bear a similar weight; this tinge of exerted effort that imbues everything with inauthenticity.
So, starting today, I’m going to try as if I am writing to myself only. To return to the diaries I once kept that was the original intent of this exercise. I am going to allow myself to be truly vulnerable and unafraid. After all, it’s just me.
I came across the Hawaiian meditative practice of “Ho’oponopono” just a few minutes ago and everything I immediately felt in response was what reminded me to write today. “I forgive you. I’m sorry. Thank you. I love you.”
These four sentences, repeated as a mantra, to unlock healing.
I remain unconvinced about meditation and certain holistic practices that feel almost willfully ignorant in blanketing everything with a band-aid of love instead of upholding emotional truth or accountability. I believe in the philosophy of the original doctrines, but with any form of belief or religion, it gets lost in human translation and I’ve come across too many out-of-touch pseudo-yogi’s who use spiritualism to validate their inherent entitlement as universal provisions that I choose to love love but not prescribe to any doctrine.
“God, I hate myself” followed by a facepalm has been the punchline to too many of my self-deprecating stories; my tales of physical and emotional clumsiness, things that would only happen to me because of the way that I am.
“Why are you the way that you are?” And we laugh.
But somehow, slowly, in a way so insidious that I can’t place the origin, I started muttering that under my breath. “I hate myself.” Sometimes laughingly, sometimes unknowingly, sometimes seriously, sometimes screaming it in the shower. I would say it while I did my makeup, while cooking, while staring at my body in the mirror, while watching Netflix, while waiting to fall asleep in my bed. “I hate myself” sometimes became “I hate my life,” sometimes it was “Everybody hates you,” but it always a variation of the three; uttered almost compulsively, like a prayer.
I don’t believe in affirmations. I think they’re corny and stupid, but it could also be because it’s so hard for me to look in the mirror and say, “I love you.” I eventually confessed this habit to my sister, then my best friend, because I caught myself saying it in a way that scared me; how often it was, how unconscious it was, how habitual and ritualized it had become. These thoughts had become a part of me.
I promised my best friend I would substitute those words with positive replacements but I’m still not at a place where I can say, “I love you” so I say, “Everybody loves you” and “I love my life” and sometimes “You look beautiful.”
I never feel the truth of these words wholeheartedly, but I never felt like I hated myself or that everybody hated me either. They were just words, stuck in my head, on repeat like a bad song or a tic. So, I hope that in replacing them, my mind will constantly have elevator music of loving thoughts on a loop; even if it is an absent-minded default. I feel loved enough to not feel like a fraud repeating these phrases but this month I’ll challenge myself with “I love myself.”
There’s a reason why I have “forgiveness” tattooed on my left thumb in Korean. There’s a crippling degree of self-awareness and over-thinking I suffer from where I replay all of my conversations and regrets over and over again in my head until I blurt out “I hate myself” in the same mortification I express laughingly in front of my friends. Sometimes I cry because I feel so guilty, like the time I called my mom sobbing last year for the time I was a giant bitch to her because I was in middle school and didn’t want to go to the zoo because I was “too cool” and it hurts my heart even now to relive how cruel I was to her until she finally snapped and we took the bus back home in silence. She doesn’t remember, but I do.
I remember all of the fights with my father, something I haven’t talked about in a really long time because it hurts too much to think about. I can’t believe it’s been twelve years. But I want to think about it more, I want the fire blazing in my throat as I type this to keep burning as I try not to cry because time is moving on too quickly and I don’t want to live in a world that’s forgotten he ever existed.
We fought, and I was awful to him and I resented him for a lot, but mostly I’m so thankful for the time that he was given just to live.
I forgive you. I’m sorry. Thank you. I love you, Daddy.

Saturday, July 4, 2020 – 9:18PM

I’m honestly so tired I can’t think of anything to write about (which seems like the standard way I start all my entries).
I slept all day yesterday, woke up early this morning expecting to feel rested but instead fought the same wave of exhaustion and came home in the middle of the afternoon to crawl into bed and take another long nap with all of my makeup on.
I woke up a few hours ago and remained in bed, marathoning my favorite show, but once I started season nine I promised myself I would write a few paragraphs before returning to that blissful state of non-existence. I hate being so tired all of the time, of not being able to fight this fatigue five cups of coffee in, of constantly rearranging my to-do list despite starting each day with the best intentions.
I’m trying to be kinder to myself, but I don’t know how to give my body what it needs and still accomplish all the things I’m juggling. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t tired but I’m assuming this is what it means to be old; when being a night owl and proclaiming you could sleep when you’re dead was cool as a rebellious teenager but now as an exhausted adult all you want is to crawl back into bed for five more minutes, regardless of the admission of weakness.
I read online somewhere that we need to stop glamorizing over-work and that couldn’t be truer for any New Yorker and our hustle culture. We normalize exorbitant rent and multiple jobs as badges of our toughness and solidarity in our suffering that separates us from the soft-skinned others outside of our city, but in truth, it is a poor quality of life with little time to cultivate a safe space for sanity.
I’m existing in that safe space now, suspended from reality, a blissful restful short period of time where my biggest priority is that cultivation; and all I feel is tired.
But I owe it to myself to still show up, every day, no matter how tired I am, no matter how much my back hurts to the point where I keep checking to see if it’s bruised. I think about the future a lot. I do this thing where whenever I feel happy or sad, or just something that feels significant or fleeting, I try to consecrate every second of that moment, so I can relive it when it becomes a memory. Sometimes it’s something painful like rejection or a new tattoo, sometimes it’s something exciting like being in a play or celebrating a holiday; and I just picture myself on the other side of that moment, thinking to myself “Remember that time?”
Sometimes it makes me sad because doing this comes with the acknowledgement that everything is fleeting, sometimes it gives me strength in realizing that this too shall pass. Sometimes it keeps me from being truly present, but most of the time it reminds me how special and rare this moment is; however painful, however uncomfortable, however anxious, however regretful, however emotional, however beautiful, however short – and it reminds me to hold onto that for as long as I can.
I used to pride myself on my amazing memory, my ability to remember such minute details that it became almost legendary, but now I find myself grasping at fading details with a fogginess that makes me remorseful. I want to remember every detail of everything, even the moments that I claim I would rather forget.
Living in a foreign place makes this feeling all the more certain, the way that you have to travel to really absorb the experiences that can’t be gleaned through books, shows, or documentaries. There is a certain way the air smells, the sights and sounds, the colors, the language, the customs, the spices. I think about Ireland a lot and how much I miss it and how I wish I could remember more about the way the air smelled in a country that was perpetually damp and rainy.
I can’t believe I’ve been living in Bali for six months, or that time has gone by this quickly. I just got a notification on my phone about a photo memory taken “on this day” which is always a dangerous trapping from someone as nostalgic as I am. It was a photo I had taken on the beach in March, and it was startling to realize that I’ve been living here through three seasons in a way I hadn’t processed because time flows differently in a country with only the duality of a wet or dry season, when it rains almost every day regardless because of the humidity, when every day feels like summer and you’re stuck in quarantine.
I realize now my fear of the fleeting is rooted in my inability to remember everything, all the small details that are too easily glazed over in the big picture memories. But it’s the tiny details that makes these experiences so personal, so lived instead of relayed through an external source.
These things you would only know if you were here too.
I want to remember the constant kerosene smell from the village that seeps into the air and sticks to my clothes. I want to remember the smell of tropical sun-dried clothing that is so different from American dryers or the glass terrace I used in Korea. I want to remember the sounds of the ducks and the chickens and all the other birds I can’t recognize or name that wake up with me every morning. I want to remember the feel of the beating sun whenever I squint out into the patio and the beads of sweat that form on my body and trickle down my back and chest and forehead and neck. I want to remember the sound of the children playing, fighting, screaming, crying outside of my window in the courtyard below; the clanging of wooden spoon against metal pot as a makeshift toy. I want to remember all of the kites flying in the sky that accompany the clouds as far as the eye can see.
I want to remember the first time I stepped outside and felt breathless by the number of stars. I want to remember all of the bare feet, even on the street and in shops and on scooters; this jungle life with no need for any form of hindrance. I want to remember all of the stray dogs and the broken sidewalks with crumbling pavement and gaping holes I have to jump over on my morning runs like track hurdles. I want to remember every sunrise and sunset how different the sky looks every single day depending on whether or not it’s rained; sometimes completely obscured by clouds, sometimes pastel, and sometimes a fire-lit red.
Someday, when I’m stateside, all I will have are the memories that will grow foggier and foggier with every passing year. This time I’ve spent here that seems so long now will be a laughably short six months in the face of the rest of the life I’ve lived in proportion. Someday, when I’m on the other side of all of this, cuddling with my two cats on the couch, all I will have are the things I’ve written down to help me remember what life was like when I lived in Bali alone for half of a year.

Sunday, July 5, 2020 – 8:48PM

I spent the entire day in bed sleeping today. I think I slept maybe 12 hours on and off in the course of 4 naps and it’s almost nine o’clock so I’m forcing myself to write so I can get back to the tenth and final season of the show I’ve been marathoning all week. It’s hard to think of something worth writing about on days like these where life hasn’t really been lived but I start each day off with the same admission before finding something worth saying so I hope today will prove to be the same.
I think I’m too often discouraged or daunted by the immediate pressure I put on myself, but in forcing myself to work through the initial insecurity, I find that I surprise myself every time. There’s got to be a life lesson somewhere in there, right? Today was an extremely muggy day and I think it rained but I can’t be certain because I slept so much that I can’t discern between what was a half-lucid memory from what were my dreams. Even now there’s an oppressive heat emanating from the laptop and my body and the constant humidity, but I know it’ll be harder for me to sleep once I revert back to a life of clinical air conditioning and false conditions, a separation from the realities of nature with all of our American amenities.
I really miss my cats and I miss how uncomfortably I would sleep in my queen-sized bed with two fully-grown felines I was afraid to disturb because they slept so contentedly intertwined in my arms and ankles as I suffocated from the heat in an environment reminiscent of this one. Even now, I miss them most before bed when I have trouble falling asleep and I always expect them to appear from the corner of my eye when I trip over a black tee shirt on the ground or pee with the door open.
I think social distancing is difficult, especially in a foreign country alone, but I led a fairly hermetic lifestyle prior to the pandemic and I got through it with the company of my cats. Being alone, truly alone, has led me to realize that I don’t thrive off of solitude as much as I used to – that my former independence in traveling alone, living alone, eating and watching movies and going to museums alone, has fallen away to a kind of absence I’ve never felt before. That sometimes memories are richer and food tastes better when you share them with someone.
I always want to be alone even when I’m with people, constantly in my own head instead of fully present, so I’m sure I’ll feel the same escapism kick in when I’m surrounded by the white noise and foot traffic of other people living their lives around me, but right now the streets are empty and my apartment is silent and sometimes I go weeks without talking to another person out loud and my own voice sounds foreign to me when I order coffee or say “Excuse me.”
I feel really physically exhausted this week, with a fatigue in my bones I can’t seem to shake, but I also feel really tired of trying to go about living my life so independently. I’ve taken care of myself for a really long time, guarded my own back, watched my own belongings, carried my own bags, and as a result, my arms and legs were covered in bruises. I watched other travelers, interacting with their loved ones, and realized that life doesn’t have to be this hard all the time.
I come to this realization every so often, but always revert to solitude when the time comes to bite the bullet. There’s always this wall I erect that I can’t seem to dismantle whenever I try to be more vulnerable and open. Maybe confessing my innermost thoughts regularly is a projection of the intimacy I haven’t been able to access in my day to day life, or maybe writing every day is simply to hone my craft.
Either way, something about the way I’ve been living isn’t working for me anymore and the jaded, bitter, independent woman with too much eyeliner and a grudge against relationships would laugh in the face of the softened, traditional woman that’s emerging. But I’m learning to love the soft parts of myself, to nurture the flesh under the hardened edges. I want to admit when I’m lonely and yearning instead of pretending that what worked for me at 18 is still emotionally viable a decade later. I might be getting old, but I’m also finally growing up.
Now time to get back to my cartoons, peace.

Monday, July 6, 2020 – 4:48PM

I’m not even sure what day it is anymore because of how much I’ve been sleeping. Just woke up from my inevitable nap and am knocking out my entry of the day before I lose any more motivation. I couldn’t get out of bed today regardless of my three cups of coffee and I’m still yawning as I write this. We’ll see how tomorrow goes, especially since I am on the final episode of my favorite show and with that inevitable feeling of emptiness, I’ll also find a renewed will to live.
Self-isolation is tricky because the Balinese government has been operating on denial and downplay since the onset of the pandemic, prioritizing the tourist trade and insisting that Bali has been spared by the gods despite one of the original contractors of the disease having vacationed and visited yoga studios here.
The numbers were manipulated through a willful lack of testing, only two cases being confirmed for months as Western tourists who had contracted the disease prior to vacationing in Bali, and none of the reported numbers made sense in relation to the statistics recorded by the rest of the world.
People here still vacationed, partied, congregated, and went on with their lives while the rest of the world was in lockdown and it felt like I was the only one taking self-isolation seriously until recently when denial was no longer a viable platform and face masks where finally implemented. Recently, there was a group of white tourists congregating at a yoga studio, packed elbow to elbow with no face masks and singing hymns as though their actions were ‘saving’ the island instead of putting the whole delicate island community in jeopardy. Once criticized by the local Balinese community, the yoga studio lied about the event before eventually “apologizing” through an Instagram post about forgiveness.
This recent occurrence summarizes everything I hate about pseudo-yogi’s, their lack of accountability and validation of entitlement, and why I refuse to go outside. I vacillate back and forth on my self-righteousness and my self-criticism because this is my fourth day in a row spent napping in a delirium. This is the only week I’ve documented my day to day, but I can’t help but wonder how many weeks of the past six months I’ve spent sleeping in and avoiding the sun.
I feel as vitamin deficient as I did when I was bedridden with an injury in the winters of New York City. The foundation I bought after tanning into a nice golden brown upon my arrival in March is now far too dark so I’m back to the porcelain shade I bought back in Korea. I joked to my sister that I look more like a Victorian spinster than someone who has spent the past six months in the tropics.
How much of my self-isolation is out of an effort to stay safe on an island with limited healthy resources and inefficient policies to contain a terrifying pandemic, never mind a population of entitled tourists refusing to prioritize the health of the locals and their neighbors? How much of my isolation is derived from an increased social anxiety after six months of solitude, like a modern-day Emily Dickinson?
Sometimes I push myself to go on long walks, morning runs, explore the jungle in the summer sun. Then I’m beset with creepy old men, idiots yelling and honking incessantly on passing scooters until I clench my fists and tell myself, “Never again.”
Some businesses I walk to are closed without regularity or warning, others don’t bother practicing social-distancing. Sometimes I spend weeks in my apartment and wonder how the rest of the world is living. Am I doing this right? Am I being as healthy as possible or promoting the worst qualities in myself? Will I regret this six months from now when I look back at my time here and only remember the four walls of my apartment in Bali? Maybe some of my self-righteous anger is misdirected envy at the people with the capability and the company to live their lives while I remain holed up in my Victorian tower.
But then I read the news almost daily about the second wave of the pandemic spiking due to the same idiots congregating, partying, and barbecuing on the beach and I tell myself I’m doing the right thing.
I’ll go for a morning run and a few long walks this week and check back in.

Tuesday, July 7, 2020 – 4:17PM

Today I woke up with good intentions, had a delicious Balinese breakfast at 7AM, then fell back asleep until exactly 3:30PM. My mom says my ability to sleep most of my life away is legendary, like how could there possibly be more sleep left to be had within me? Sometimes, on my visits home, she sends my sister to check if I’m still breathing. I think often of that 24-hour sleep marathon and how easily I could win.
Upon getting out of bed, I took a quick shower because my head was still full of my last lucid dream – a girl in a black nightgown in the countryside locked up in her home because her father was an alcoholic but it was her sixteenth birthday so the villagers gathered with a trampoline under her window so she could sneak outside and have the celebration she deserved while her father was out on a bender.
All of my dreams always feel so real and I need to be better about journaling them the minute I wake up instead of hours later, when minute details like the color of the bedroom walls or certain snippets of conversation are still fresh in my head. After my shower, I was stepping out of the bathroom; separated from the living area with a single marble step rather than a full staircase, when I slipped and fell and felt stricken by a fear I’ve retained since my spinal injury two years ago.
I’ve fallen a lot since I’ve moved to Bali – a fact which makes my friends and family both exasperated and worried. I’ve rolled my ankle and fallen into traffic on a morning run, I’ve smashed my knee into the bedpost doing at-home workouts, and I’ve slipped on the marble floors twice in one day when the torrential rain seeped into my bedroom and I was too lazy to clean it and suffered the consequences of my procrastination with brittle bone against hard marble in succession.
Every time I fall, I swear everything moves in slow motion – like when people say your life flashes before your eyes or that time I took my expensive porcelain doll on a picnic outside and dropped it onto the concrete sidewalk. You just see everything with such clarity, however briefly, and all you can do in that moment is act on a split second granted to you before the impact hits and everything shatters. Every time I slip and fall, I consciously choose to fall forward, onto my knees and ankles instead of falling backward like I used to (so many banana-peel falls in my lifetime).
So, I fell forward as the towel slipped from underneath my feet and I saw the marble step rising to meet me and I tucked my leg under my body as a buffer between stone and tailbone and winced as I felt the crunching impact. Everything hurt so badly I couldn’t scream or cry out and hobbled to the bed and buried my face into the mattress to absorb my shock and the waves of reverberating pain that flooded my body after the initial adrenaline rush delay.
Even now as I write this, my ankle is propped up on a pillow and my body is pulsing with a pain I’m doing my best to ignore. My tattoo artist likened my pain tolerance to a legendary spy-master, saying I must have saved Korea in a past life by remaining unwavering even through the worst torture tactics, and it’s something I think about often on the days my clumsy inclinations betray me and I’m lying in bed nursing yet another ugly bruise or bloody injury.
There are parallel raised welts from ankle to knee in perfect placement of where stone met skin, in the same way I had horizontal marks down the length of my back when I fell down the stairs two years ago. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: stairs are my lifelong enemy. My ankle is worse, swollen and blackened with a bleeding bruise the size of my palm. I think the saddest part – as I fell in a panic, praying I wouldn’t break it – was that my only thought was: “I wish I wasn’t alone.”
I’m not going to sugarcoat it, this is a bad injury. I can’t bear any weight on my right side. But according to the local bonesetter, it’s fractured at worst, not broken. I don’t need to go to the hospital in the middle of the jungle in the midst of a pandemic and I don’t need to travel on crutches while wandering a foreign country alone. I will check in again tomorrow, but I can’t help but feel frustrated at putting my run and yoga on hold when I’m already quarantined in this tiny space and felt trapped in my body for so long even before all of this. Maybe if I hadn’t slept so much, if I wasn’t in bed until 3PM at this exact moment, I wouldn’t have fallen, and it’s a thought I can’t stop myself from having.
I’m so sick of this cycle of breaking and healing. I promised my mother I would be more careful, having grown up with a permanent collection of bruised knees and skinned elbows. I collected each scar proudly, like a lightning bug in a jar, embracing my clumsiness as a definitive part of my personality. It wasn’t until I broke my first bone, spent two years in bed, and still feel the ramifications of my injury that I took my battered body seriously. I don’t understand how other women are so graceful, so light on their feet and assured in their movements while I come barreling in, breathless and sweaty like an unbroken puppy. I’m constantly tripping, falling, stumbling, awkward and unsure of my movements and fidgeting in a way that drives my mom crazy. It’s like the thoughts in my head translate into my trembling hands and shaky knees and I can’t ever stay still or silent.
My body hurts, and I won’t allow myself to feel the pain fully or give into the urge to cry. My doctor was shocked when he learned I had been working for a full week before finally getting x-rayed and realizing the extent of my injury. He prescribed me the strongest painkillers and shook his head in disbelief at my audacity, in the same way my tattoo artist couldn’t comprehend how I didn’t let out a single sound in our forty-eight-hour session. I don’t know why pain has become a part of my daily complex, an innate part of my composition instead of an unnatural phenomenon. Somehow, from bruised knees it’s come to this, the robbing of weakness even when my bones are broken and ignoring my own pain signals.
It’s okay to be weak, it’s okay to be in pain, it’s okay to ask for help, it’s okay to be vulnerable, it’s okay to feel lonely.
Life doesn’t have to be all hard edges and gritted teeth.
Let’s still work on the clumsiness though, that’s a problem.