We Get Up

For those of you who are squeamish, there is no gore in this entry. I made a separate entry with the pictures of the wound for those who are interested. That is found here. Don’t click if you don’t like blood and torn flesh.

In the movie Batman Begins, there is a reoccurring line. It goes like this:

Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.

I like that. It is reminiscent, albeit more poetic, than the phrase my mother used throughout my childhood, which was:

Suck it up and move on. The world won’t wait for you.

Matt and I did both today. 

To make a long story short, we, along with another couple, had accumulated enough freebies to take an essentially free weekend trip together. This trip involved skiing. Today was supposed to be a whole day of skiing, but was cut to about fifteen minutes of skiing when Matt got fancy and his ski bit him on the leg.

Two Things I Learned Today
1.) Skis have sharp edges.
2.) They are sharp on purpose. People make them that way.

For those of you who just want the quick and dirty and could care less about my quasi-philosophical ramblings, this next part is for you.

After many forms, and questions, and driving an hour to an urgent care clinic, where there were more forms and questions, Matt ended up with twelve stitches on his left shin about four inches below the knee. Four stitches are inside pulling together the muscles and tendons he severed, eight are on top to make sure the scar he gets isn’t too manly. He has to use crutches the next few weeks to keep the sutures from pulling, which he is none too pleased about, but we have made a lot of politically incorrect jokes about the situation that have made it better.

Which segues me to my next, quasi-philosophical, and perhaps ultimate point which is life is what you make of it.

At the end of the day, what happened really sucked. It was painful for Matt, disappointing and expensive for both of us, and straining on the other couple with whom we went, but here’s the thing: Life is what you make of it.

We could have sulked, and cried, and carried on about how unfair life is and how unjust the universe can be, but what is the point of that? Would it make us feel better? No. Would it make the injury and the fall out from it disappear? No. Would it get us back the time and money and whatever else we lost/spent on this endeavor? No.

Complaining has never added one ounce of happiness to my life. It has never added joy, enlightenment, opportunity, or experience. It has never been a balm. It has never been a friend. So today we didn’t complain.

Sure. We sighed. It was disappointing. We wanted to spend the day skiing with friends and having a grand old time, but it wasn’t in the cards. So we laughed. We laughed with the paramedics that treated Matt on the scene. We laughed with the receptionists we met at the  urgent care center. We laughed with the RN, the PA, the X-Ray tech, the billing tech, and with each other. We laughed and we made memories that were tainted with joy instead of grief, and I like that we made that choice.

I like that I have a partner that chooses to smile instead of play the martyr. I like that I have partner that was friendly, kind, and gracious even though he was in pain. I like that I have a partner that felt worse for messing up our friends weekend and for taking away my chance to ski before he thought of his own discomfort,

At the end of the day, it was far from perfect, but maybe it was better. Instead of being that weekend where we went away and skied with friends, it became the weekend where we laughed with medical professionals and witnessed the kindness of strangers. It became the weekend where I drove home and we listened to radio dramas and laughed. It became the weekend where Matt got a cool scar, but I loved him more than I did yesterday, and for that it is all worth it.

Isn’t it?

For me, it is.