<\/p>\nFalling Down<\/h1>\n
<\/center>As I lay on my back on that cold Christmas night, I watched the stars turn, a great wheel dancing and spinning, greater than I would ever be. This comforted me to no end.<\/p>\n
I was numb, not daring to move at all. The fall I’d taken had been particularly hard, and the sharp ice that was pushing into my back no longer caused pain. I couldn’t tell if it had gone through the jacket and into my back or not, and I couldn’t remember where the pain had been exactly.<\/p>\n
I only knew it had been somewhere in the center of my lower back.<\/p>\n
I wasn’t afraid to move . . . I simply watched the stars and realized that there was a chance that I wouldn’t be able to. The ice was sharp, I knew, and the probable location of the ice shard was right around my spine.<\/p>\n
So I lay there, quietly watching the stars, delaying the inevitable. Still, no fear ran through me, but I understood that this was because my toes and legs were like Schrodinger’s ill-fated cats: neither alive nor dead. Until observation, neither and both were simultaneously true.<\/p>\n
My head was resting on a sharp point of ice, and one hand began burning from where it scraped the ice when I tried to stop my fall. As feeling returned to various upper-body-parts, I waited for some signal from below my waist. Nothing came, and still there was no feeling from the shard of ice I knew I was laying on.<\/p>\n
I looked at the stars, finally realizing that I had to move soon. Sometimes, looking into the cosmos places you more surely than looking around.<\/p>\n
I’d fallen in the middle of an icy road.<\/p>\n
The road wasn’t busy, and I knew I probably had more time if I wanted to take that chance, but I also knew it was dark, and with the icy conditions, the moment a car comes is not the time to discover that you are totally helpless.<\/p>\n
I took a moment and wiggled my fingers. It hurt, but everything worked. I turned my head to the left and right, checking for traffic in earnest for the first time.<\/p>\n
Still, I did not move my legs or toes. Still, there was no fear, just realization that this would all finally collapse into one reality when I did.<\/p>\n
There was a prayer. Silent, short, and simple.<\/p>\n
And my toes moved.<\/p>\n
I was exuberant, but with the joy and pleasure came a tremendous pain. I rolled over and felt my back. The jacket was not torn, but I knew now where the ice shard had hit me, and I wasn’t sure if I was bleeding under my coat or not.<\/p>\n
I reached up under and prodded my skin. Pain, but no wetness was felt. No stinging of an open wound. I felt around some more, and found a second spot that radiated the same pain. I compared these spots with my spine.<\/p>\n
I’d landed on the ice less than an inch from my spine.<\/p>\n
I turned to look at the offending shard, and I gasped. It hadn’t been merely a small shard, broad-bladed or dully broken. It was a spike. A spike of 4 inches that was sharp, as if it had been waiting for me to fall on it. Next to it was its brother, shorter but no less sharp. I still lay in the street, staring at these spikes and feeling the pain they’d caused me, thinking about how close they had come to cracking open my spine.<\/p>\n
A lighter jacket. An inch to the right. Holding a hot drink in my right hand. Any of these things could have done far worse to me.<\/p>\n
I kicked both spikes down, not out of spite (I like things that remind me of my mortality in a sick, twisted way), but because someone else might have stepped in the same place, perhaps less well-dressed for the weather, perhaps during a busier time on that street, and the may never have gotten up again.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, I lifted my shirt to show Tina the bruises. She gasped at them, and shuddered a bit. I can’t see them very well, myself, but I know what they look like. I can feel them, and that gives me an amazing idea of what they look like.<\/p>\n
And now, it hurts to sit or lie down, and it hurts to stand.<\/p>\n
But the pain isn’t that much.<\/p>\n
It’s better than not being able to feel it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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