You remember the scenario?
This past Thursday was when I needed to tell Utah which US consulate it was that I wanted to pick-up my visa from. And then this Friday was when I expected to receive the results of my MRI. Could it have been timed any worse?
Just out of hope rather than expectation, I wander into the doctor's surgery as I'm walking past on Thursday lunch-time.
Good news. They have my results. But... the next time that I can get an appointment with the doctor? Monday.
It's like God's just fucking toying with me or something. My results, the results that will determine whether or not I'm going to need treatment on my knee, and hence determining whether I'll be picking up my visa in Latin America or England, are in that building. Just sat there. It's just that I don't get to see them until Monday. What the fuck?
This had been something of a trying couple of days already. Having a Skype-relationship has it's pitfalls. And for reasons that I won't go onto recollect, I was... basically expecting me and Lilach to have broken up by the end of the day. I was unhappy about something, and I didn't see that there was going to be a way to rectify it.
I hadn't really slept the night before because of it. And my day up to this point I had been kind of keeping myself to myself in my room. Kind of upset about everything I didn't really want to see anyone. But having been back for three-weeks already, I'd committed to seeing my grandad this lunch-time. And having already been busy for the previous two-times that he'd been in the area, to back-out of this one he'd start thinking that I was doing it deliberately. So from being an emotional mess, I had to pretend life was all fucking, flowers and sunshine for a couple of hours.
That was fun. I almost broke-down on more than one occasion.
Life doesn't stop though. And by anyway it was necessary, I needed to get the results of this MRI. So I decided to go and hassle the doctors some more. See if they'd had any cancellations that I could fill. And being an annoying cunt paid its dividends, as when I walk in the door, they've just that second had a cancellation for an appointment in an hour. I will get to find out my results.
I have an hour to kill and it's not worth making the walk home. So I go and sit in Twickenham high-street for a bit. Try and clear my head. Because although I was trying to look all normal and happy on the surface, I was a fucking wreck.
I sat there for a while watching charity-workers attempting to coax people out of £2 per month to save the fucking mosquitos or something. Made me wonder as I watched them carefully select which people they chose to harass, what the fuck is it about me? Because I would watch them only attempt to talk to every ten or fifteenth person. And yet no matter where I am in the world, I without fail, will get selected as one of the people that they think is going to give them money.
Me. Me. I wouldn't get into taxis in Peru because they'd refuse to drop the price 10p. What the fuck about my persona can say that I'm going to give you money? It's like asking a gorilla for a banana.
Anyway time passed. And I'm wandering back to the doctor's surgery.
I have a flight back to Paraguay booked two-and-a-half weeks from now. That's no accident. South America's where I want to be right now. But with everything that's going on. Me and Lilach. My visa. Knowing whether or not to buy insurance. The ability to arrange a place to live in Utah. Everything would suddenly go away if I found myself having to stay in England for medical reasons.
I didn't want to. But having barely slept and spending most of the morning verging on tears, there was a part of me that just wanted everything to go away. And if I need knee surgery, everything goes away. All of my problems suddenly get solved.
I go into the doctor's. "The good news," she tells me, " is that you don't have a ligament tear. The bad news is that you have a tear in your cartilage." She goes onto tell me that loose cartilage in my left-knee is somehow causing the muscle to weaken. And although doing... normal things, it shouldn't really cause a problem. As the fact that I've been living with it for 18-months testifies. To do something like skiing, the weakened left leg will cause undue stress on my right leg, and as such if I'm going to be skiing, there's a significantly increased chance of fucking-up my right-knee if I don't get this sorted.
How do I get it sorted? I need surgery to take out the cartilage.
I didn't expect that.
It hurts sometimes. It feels like a knee that's been injured in the past. But I've been backpacking on it for 18-months. Multiple-times daily I have to haul-up my pack. When I was hitch-hiking through Canada I would regularly have to walk for hours carrying in addition to all of my belongings, six-litres of water and three-days worth of dried or tinned foods. I even had the fear that it was all just in my head. Paranoia. That there really was nothing wrong with me. Because I can quite happily go out running 8-miles at a time. And it's my fitness and not my knee that means I can't go further.
Surgery...
When I've been fine on it for 18-months. Surgery...
She couldn't really believe that I'd been putting-up with this for so long. It just hurts once in a while, what's the big fucking deal? I don't need surgery.
Well apparently if I'm going to be going skiing, I do.
I ask her how long it's going to take to get it fixed. She doesn't know. So I ask her, with a flight to Paraguay in two-weeks, can it be done before then? No. Well with a job in Utah in three-and-a-half months, can it be done before then? It should be.
That was what I needed to know. That was what I needed to know by the end of this day. Because had I had my appointment on Monday afternoon as was initially scheduled, I would have emailed Utah by the end of this day, and told them... I don't know what I would have told them. Maybe La Paz if me and Lilach weren't going to stay together. Maybe Panama City if we were. But the one guarantee that I can give, is that it damn-sure wouldn't have been London. Now I was staying in London.
I was kind of at a loss as to how everything in my perfect life, it was all just crumbling around me.
Three-weeks earlier I'd found myself in Paraguay. I was doing what it was that I love. Travelling. Although we were temporarily separated, I was sceduled to soon be meeting again with a girl who's perfect for me. Who I care about more than ever she can know. My life was... how could I be happier?
Then in three-weeks, my grand-mother dies. I find out that I need knee-surgery. Me and Lilach were on the verge of separation. My travelling has essentially ended. At least for the time-being.
Everything was just crumbling around me. It was kind of like God decided to take everything that was perfect for me, and just say bollocks to you. You haven't been praying enough. I'm going to gradually start making your life shitter and shitter. You tool.
My health, my love, my adventure, my family. One step at a time things were just disintegrating around me.
I hoped that that was the trough. And through an emotional and testing three or four hours, me and Lilach managed to sort-out everything. Even thousands of miles away, I was so happy to have her back again. But what now? For when we knew that we'd be meeting again in three-weeks, things were already tough. Now we can't be meeting in Peru. I'm stuck in fucking England waiting for knee surgery. Now what happens to us?
Six-months in Utah is now looming for me. Having a retarded-knee makes that all the more likely as I'll now be able to pick-up my visa in London.
We're already apart. Now we're not meeting in Peru. Six-months more apart from November is on the horizon. How is this sustainable? How is this a relationship?
For me there's no choice. The reason that I couldn't sleep a few nights back, was that I'm not just saying it when I say that she's the only thing I think of from the moment I wake-up until the moment that I go to sleep. I mean it literally. So when I'm laying in bed and she's the only thing that I can think of, and the only thing that I can think of makes me upset, how can I sleep on that? I've got no want, no desire, no need to be with anyone else. Because as stupid as it sounds considering the circumstances, I fantasise about us being together.
Like when I'm at home washing the dishes, I'm thinking to myself "I wonder what this will be like when we're doing it in our own place." When I go for a walk in the park, all I can think about is us doing it together.
I didn't really hear any new music in the twenty or twenty-one months that I was travelling. So this might be a relatively old song. Not to me. And everything that I hear B.O.B, Nothin' on you, I think of her. The lyrics say exactly how I feel.
Not playing? Click here. Still not playing? Email me.
"Beautiful girls, all over the world, I could be chasing but my time would be wasting. They've got nothing on you baby. Nothing on you baby."
I sound so fucking gay right now but I don't care.
Six-months apart. Twelve-months apart. I don't care. I'll wait twelve-months to be with someone that's perfect rather than take the option of being with any girl that I choose, whom I couldn't really give a fuck about.
I don't think that Lilach really sees it that way though. And I can't blame her for that for a second.
She doesn't want to have a relationship with fucking Skype. I can understand that.
We've already talked that perhaps she'll come over here for a month or six-weeks before I go to Utah. Cutting-short her time in South America to do it. But for six-months after that. I can't blame her for being unwilling to commit.
A relationship is a partnership apart from anything else. So anything that she feels it's as much my fault for not making her feel different. If she doesn't feel that she can wait for six-months, then that's my fault too. And I understand that six-months is a long-time.
It was my birthday a couple of days ago. And this contentious issue made it just about the worst birthday that I've ever had. Because I spent the whole day thinking that as soon as we spoke in the evening... that would be the end of us. I didn't know or not if we'd still be together. And still unsure at the time that I came to blow-out the candles on an unexpected birthday cake, I don't believe in any of this stuff, but I had one wish.
And I remember thinking to myself that whatever happens with us, I just wish that everything's always ok for Lilach. That she's always happy. Whether it's with me or someone else, I always want her to be happy. Because she deserves it.
Two-days later and things are still a little up-in-the-air. We last spoke and she said that she'd be cutting-short her travelling and coming over to England. Maybe we'd travel a bit of Europe whilst she was here. But... I don't know. I'm not sure that she's too sure. And I can't blame her. Because we never pretended to be a perfect couple. And that's a big, big sacrifice to make.
Today we're still together. I hope that we will be tomorrow. But this stupid little piece of cartilage in my left-knee means that we can't meet in Peru anymore. So who knows?
Who'd have known that having a little fall whilst skiing 18-months ago could potentially have such a profound impact on my life? And for something I still remember like it was yesterday, it was in very scant-detail that I wrote about this little accident. For those two or three seconds I remember everything.
I remember the exact moment that I realised I was going to fall. I was going too fast and I over-shot a turn. As I dug-in my left-ski, it gave-way and I started tumbling.
My right-ski. It came unclipped. My left-ski didn't.
I'm rapidly turning as I fall. My left-foot has a ski attached to it so my leg cannot keep-up. And I remember in all this calamity that I was thinking to myself that my left-leg is about to snap. I was convinced that bones had to break. There was no way that my leg could take this much strain without something giving. It's not anatomically possible.
That was my worst memory of it all. It was before I'd even stopped moving. I was still falling. But that exact point when I felt like my leg was about to snap, that sticks with me. That exact moment I'll always remember. Bracing myself for my thigh-bone to just snap in half. I wouldn't say that I have nightmares about it now. But I remember it vividly. That... fear in my mind that this was about to happen.
People always say in something like this, that it all happens so fast. That they don't have the time to be scared.
This didn't happen too fast. Everything slowed down. This is three-seconds of my life that I can remember every thought, feeling, pain, emotion.
I remember the exact 'twang' in my knee, that I now assume was the cartilage tearing. Up until this point I had always assumed that it was a ligament. I remember the feeling afterwards when I was stopped. I was there. Still. I didn't know what had happened. For time I didn't know if my leg was broken or not.
This shit doesn't go too fast to remember it. Everything fucking slows down so that you can relive every fear over and over again.
And if that isn't fun enough, 18-months later and these three-seconds may be what breaks-up me and Lilach.
My arrogance caused this injury. I was simply skiing between lifts. A short-stretch of the mountain that I'd covered hundreds of times. Didn't even bother to put my hands through my poles. Just held them both in one hand.
Never going to be that stupid again. When I think now of the repercussions that my arrogance 18-months ago is having on my life at this moment...
You can't go back in time and change mistakes. But you can fucking learn from them. I can still picture like it was yesterday the three-seconds that fucked my knee. I don't like that memory. It's not a fun thing to have in my brain. To be able to relive. And if that's the reason me and Lilach break-up...
I've learned the hard-way that you can injure yourself on any fucking part of the mountain if you're being a twat about it. I'll remember that if this season in Utah ever materialises. Otherwise I could be adding more such memories to torment myself with.
Well all of this, the news that I was going to be staying in England rather than going back to Paraguay, it took my by surprise a little bit. Everything I was doing, everything that I was planning, it was all under the assumption that I'd be leaving England again come September 1st. So now I find myself, kind of just, stuck. Maybe 12-weeks until I fly-out to Utah. In a bit of a limbo.
I'd like to say that I can get a job in that time. But getting a job for three-months is do-able, but never easy. Especially because it's going to take two-weeks to get the job, and a week or so to prepare to fly-out would be appreciated as well. So I really have eight or nine weeks. And I'm going to need time to get knee surgery in the middle of all of that.
Of which talking about, does knee surgery take a day? Cut it open, suck out the loose cartilage, and Bob's your uncle, I'm running again the next day. Or will it take me weeks to recover? I don't fucking know. I have a surgical consult scheduled for September 9th. Up until then, I'm just fucking guessing. I don't know what this shit entails. Maybe it'll take a day. Maybe it'll mean that I'm on crutches afterwards. I don't fucking know. How the fuck am I supposed to plan around this shit when I have to wait three-weeks just to find out what it entails?
So regarding getting a job, barring the usual hits like sperm-donor or market-researcher, what the fuck is out there on that time-frame?
I've missed the gym. I have the opportunity to get a gym for three-months now. And that's something that I suppose gives all of this bullshit a silver-lining. But basically I find myself a little lost now that I've been given three-months that I didn't anticipate.
I hope Lilach comes over. I really hope that she does. But other than that I just kind of find myself in a limbo of counting-down for Utah. Because I did not see this coming.
I knew that it could happen. I knew that there was something in my knee. But surgery. That's just gay...
My head's a fucking mess at the moment. I didn't expect it to be like this. So now I find myself just trying to grasp exactly what it is that I'm going to be doing for three months. All because I got too cocky on the ski-slopes 18-months ago. I am still learning the hard way that that's not a good thing to do.