Thursday 31 May 2012

Runaway

Today, I was back in the pool. I was feeling relatively cocky: my Dead Leg, apart from the odd patellar dislocation, has been behaving himself. I was walking lengths, up and down the pool, wearing pink and yellow flippers, when an idea for the annual anniversary poem popped into my head (a good thing, too, because it was yesterday. Ooops). A problem: I began to pay less attention to the flippers than to words. I stopped to do my turn at the far end of the pool, and the Dead Leg decided to go buoyant, and out to the side he went. Physical activity has always provided the impetus for a lot of my creative output. I used to compose music, write lyrics, and work on poems in my head as I ran. I could run miles, and come home tired enough to focus, and get things down on paper. No more. If I lose focus on the leg, he runs off, seeking asylum or distractions. I was afraid I'd I lost track of the poem, but it is still there, rumbling around in the back of my head.

Tuesday 29 May 2012

Rumpled

I feel rumpled inside, bunched and hunched and as if nothing fits quite right. Creatively speaking, I have started loads of new projects and poems, and added a few pages to a growing novel I am not supposed to be writing at all. I don't feel settled enough somehow to properly tend to any of them, to iron out the wrinkles.

Thursday 24 May 2012

Weightlifting

I had my second hydrotherapy session today. It feels wonderful to be in the (very) warm water, to feel pain and tension and the heavy burden that is the Dead Leg seep away for a little while. I feel very much at home in the water, and I have to resist the urge to drop down and scoot along the bottom of the pool. I used to tune out the world that way, stop being responsible and the oldest and worrying about where everyone else was. I have to pay attention at hydrotherapy, because I might miss something crucial, the one magical exercise that will mean I get to leave the Dead Leg floating here by himself forever.

When my session is over, I walk to the bottom of the stairs. As I climb up, I get heavier and heavier. I stagger under the weight of the Dead Leg. He is still here. I collect all of my pain,  too, as I walk up the steps, and the weight that comes from knowing this is as good as I'll get, this 45 minute stint in the pool before I have to collect being disabled as I collect my keys from the basket.