An Ordinary Day

Today is the twenty-second of February, twenty-sixteen. It is an ordinary, uninteresting, drab winter day. Today is in fact a Monday, greeted by moaning, groaning, rolling over for five more minutes sleep, cursing as the blaring of that darned alarm clock pulls you from your slumber once again and hitting the snooze button way more times than you ought to; berating yourself for staying up so late Sunday night, regretting all the things you didn't get done on your days off. There is the scramble to get dressed in the cold, fumbling to put on socks as the chill of the floor seeps through your bear feet and floods into your body, a hurried breakfast, a quick splash of water in the face and a hurried comb through the hair, madly dashing about to gather your school or work supplies and a full on sprint out the door to make it on time to wherever you need but most likely don't want to be today. That and lots and lots of coffee. Today is an ordinary day.

Of course calling to day ordinary is a little bit harsh and somewhat misleading. Every day is both ordinary and special, unique, in its own way. The routine might be the same, the work the same, the commute, prepackaged lunch, bagel and mocha frappe latter something that always tastes like an exact carbon match from some national coffee shop. But there are also the little things, even the minute details - the friendly handsome guy you see on the bus each morning who spared an extra fifty cents for the elderly lady short on her bus fair, an old colleague you bump into for the first time in years, getting an unexpected but much welcomed grade on a school project, hearing the birds chirp in the park when the frosty air melts away after a harsh winter storm. The list could go on - little things, simple things, the things that make life pleasant and good.

And for some people, this Monday is a truly exceptional day - people finding out that they got their ideal job, getting married, having children, receiving the positive medical news they have been waiting to hear for months, buying a first house, leaving on a dream vacation. The list goes on and on. There are happy, smiling, joyful people.

My Monday is an ordinary Monday too, just like yours. The same routine - sleeping late, computer games, reading books, colouring, taking pills, doing my "turns", pin site care. My Monday might be different than yours, filled with medical things and health worries, but it is my ordinary, the same as yesterday and they day before that and... I could go on.

But today is not just ordinary. Today is February twenty-second, twenty sixteen; this day marks ten years since I broke my leg. It is difficult to believe how something as simple, so easily treated as a broken leg could have turned into a decade long ordeal. Yes, ten years for one broken tibia. Sometimes it doesn't seem fair, but then life is not fair... It feels surreal to be sitting here now thinking about the same things I did ten years ago - healing bones, walking, crutches chaffing, pain medication. And it is odder still to actually say "it is now ten years". For the last six months, if not several more, I have been saying "almost a decade now, almost ten years," but now it is actually here and it is so unreal. It hurts to say. It makes me want to scream and cry and curse. It makes me want to be held like a child, comforted, safe with warm, loving arms wrapped around me. Today my mother told me she is proud of me. This is a thing every child wants to hear, but I do not know what to say, to think. How can I be proud of something that has become ordinary? Surgeries, external fixators, pin sites, dressing changes, physiotherapy, doctor's appointments, x-rays, high hopes and anxiety at the thought of what could go wrong.

It is all ordinary and yet I couldn't shake the thought of the significance of the date throughout the day. Yes, today is just another day, regular, normal (for me), the same as usual, but in the grander scheme of things, at least for my life, today's date was important. I won't call it a milestone, because that alludes to something good, beautiful, and achievement, well, achieved, a success. But it was some kind of a marker. Not many people can say that they dealt with a broken leg and all its consequences for ten whole years But here we are, I can. And it hurts.

And it is all kind of odd, because I don't put much stock in these kinds of things. Dates never really hold much significance to me - anniversaries, the day a couple started dating, birthdays, deaths and so forth. Each day is what we make of it, not the number assigned to it. But today has bothered me. I don't know exactly why, but I do know it makes me sad. Ten years of my life for something so easily preventable, so easily fixable if the proper care and attention had been given, a minute or less to write a simple prescription for antibiotics. It could have been preventable. It should have been. It shouldn't be what it is now, but it is. And I wish that today was wasn't ordinary - it shouldn't be, at least not the way it is now, after ten years. I hope for an ordinary Monday morning, the type most people dislike and moan about. I want a healthy life, a healthy Monday, a healthy normal busy hectic Monday. I want to fall into that day like falling backwards into a pool, cushioned by the water. I want to run head long into the days and have to embrace me. And I think that is what has been bugging me - today might seem ordinary because I am used to it, my situation, but everything is far from it, external fixator and all. The ten year mark is just another reminder of that.