Tuesday. Not a Monday. No. Monday has it's own claim to fame, but Tuesday. You know, Tuesday that is supposed to be the calm after the shit storm that is Monday. Yes, that Tuesday, the day you wake up saying thank God it's not Monday. Tuesday, only my bloody Tuesday decided to give Monday a run for it's money, because my Tuesday decided to present itself like a Friday the 13th, wrapped in a nice little blanket that is April fools, just for good measure. Just a Tuesday in a bed I hadn't left properly in the better part of a year, in a house that kept costing money I didn't have, with four kids who needed a mother while their mother is staring at a ceiling and counting cracks because life was too hard too deal with. A life where all the days of the week had decided to swap roles and turn every bloody day into a freaking Monday. Groundhog style.
I was floored, me, of all people. The girl who once, many moons ago had the courage to pack her life into 4 suitcases with her 6yr old daughter and relocated to a Country where there was no family, no support system. Nothing. Nothing but the sheer will to give her daughter a better life and a chance at opportunities she wouldn't otherwise have and a recalcitrant attitude. That girl with grit and determination was floored. No one has ever had the honor of claiming they floored me, and here a single humble Tuesday knocked my ass flat on the ground, quite bloody literally.
Let's go back to where all of this started. 2019 started like any other year, with a New Years resolution and list of things I would like to do and achieve, and much like the saying goes, life happens while we are making other plans. Oh, how true this is! I had a job. A good one. The kind that comes with a salary and a parking space and the quiet confidence of a woman who knows what she's doing and where she's going, and no, the fast way down the stairs wasn't where I was intending to go. Being a full time working mom at this stage with 4 beautiful daughters, I don't really have time to lounge around and enjoy the luxury life of a gym after work, so I take the stairs instead of the lift, yes, you guessed it, I fell down a flight of stairs, in my prescious suit and high heels I arsed up like a freshly butchered chicken, legs in the air, and my body decided that was the beginning of a very long and very unasked-for conversation about everything I'd been taking for granted.
I got up in that stairwell and was eternally greatfull there was not a single soul to witness me literally falling off of my own pedestal and be brought back down to earth, not just figuratively. I went from young, hip, got-all-my-shit-in-one-sock woman, to something I didn't recognize at all, on this fateful, abominable Teusday. My fall from "grace" that was anything but graceful, brought with it a set of challenges. Challenges I was in no way, shape or form prepared or equipped to deal with. The original injuries from my tiny tumble weren't so terrible, so I kept working. A few things needed adjusting, for instance, my bike was no longer my chosen form of transport because both my wrists got badly injured. My body creaked and cracked and everything that never even need a thought to perform became a negotiation, and as you have quite rightly figured out by now, I was not the negotiating type. Nope, and all the opportunities life gave me to learn how to navigate a negotiation, which I bullheadly ploughed through rather than learn the art of negotioting, might have come in handy, but now we'll never know because now I am negotiating with a thing that has absolutely no regard for negotiating. But the struggles that came with the fall where minor and manageable, the real challenge was yet to present it self. Skip nine months forward of navigating a system that moves at the speed of cold honey while your body does increasingly creative things with pain. I finally have my surgery. Oh, how a blessing turned into the ultimate gift from hell. During surgery they nicked a nerve. Just a small thing you might think, but no, it's the kind of thing that changes everything.
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. aka CRPS. Boy did I get an education. I didn't even know this was a thing, and to be quite frank and completely honest, if I met someone with CRPS before my lovely introduction to it, I would've rolled my eyes and thought that it is just a lazy man's excuse to not get down and dirty and get the job done. Oh, my soul how wrong I would've been. For those of you, who like me have never heard of CRPS, it is basically where your nervous system decides that a tiny little insignificant contained injury is actually a catastrophy, grab your shit, and run, the house is on fire, kinda catastrophy. When in actual fact there is no fire, there isn't even smoke, but your nervous system stays in a permanent state of emergency and responds accordingly. Forever. There is no off switch. There is no finish line. There is no end to the eternal hell you have woken up in. Because that is literally what I woke up to. Hell. With a fire poker permanently jammed into my wrist, only the fire never burns out. There are good days and there are bad days and then there are days that make the bad days look like a bad hairday, and, oh, what I wouldn't give to swap this for a bad hair day. No 2 days are the same, and on the better days when you fall for your own dilusion that you've got this, you very quickly discover the next day, you so don't got this. At first it started with copious amounts of pain meds and a brave face, dragging my ass out of bed, because this delightful little surprise decided to come rock my world when my youngest was only 18months old, and the others were five and six and my eldest was turning 18 and about to leave the house. Now if you are fortunate enough to be a mom you would know, that even on your best days, being a fulltime working mom, can be challenging. Now try being a mom with all your engines on strike and the one you have miss fires more than it fires. Anyway, you get it, it was challenging. I tried, I tried my very best, to put on a brave face and try and function like a normal human being, but I was loosing this war, one tiny little step a day, until one day, I just didn’t get out of bed, and the next day and the next, until eventually, my bed became my safe space, my comfort zone, so much so that I didn't realize that for the better part of a year, that is where I was, in bed, with no desire to admit that this life, was indeed my new life. Denial. That's what I had, that's all I had. I had no mom close by to help, no dad close with words of inspiration, they we're all on another continent, THIS was my life now. Pain and grief. Grief for what was and will never be again, grief for what I lost, grief for the life my amazing kids definitely didn't ask for but got nonetheless. The particular combination of physical agony and the quiet collapse of the life you thought you were building — that absolutely has the power to take away everything you thought you have and put you flat on your back with almost 0 emotional or physical energy to face what needs to be faced.
My girls were growing up without me. On good days, the thought of this made me cry, the thought that I so want to be a part of their lives but barely being able to cope. The meds were making me groggy and miserable, so even on good days I was a grumpy cow.
Until this unexpected Teusday, lying in my bed, feeling oh so sorry for myself, que the mailman. As If things weren't already tough enough, I get a letter from the bank informing me that my fixed mortgage has expired and needs to be fix iagain and the best interest rate available means that my mortgage repayments are now double. Yes, DOUBLE. I cried. Nothing was working for me except my tearduckts, they had no problem working, these babies were pumping tears like they were commissioned. Nothing, and I mean nothing was working in my favor. And there I sat, tear stained face, smudged letter, and the realization, I NEED to make a plan. I sat with that letter and I did the math, and the math was cruel and the options were limited. I ran through all of them with the kind of clarity that only real desperation produces. I started going through all the options
Corporate job — Ha, my nervous system has opinions about that.
Moving — this is home. My home. My daughter's home so, No.
Becoming a lady of the night — I considered it. Briefly. I mean, I have been spending the better part of the last year on my back... eventually I ruled it out on logistical grounds mostly. Living miles away from the closest civilization is a long commute for that particular career and I can't drive more than 4miles anyway. No judgment to those for whom the geography works out better.
Becoming a bum — this one I sat with longer than I'd like to admit. Ultimately the admin felt overwhelming.
And then, somewhere between the soggy mortgage letter and the list of options that all led nowhere, came a thought so quiet and so certain it stopped everything.
This can't be it.
I thought, this Can't be it! This can't possibly be all my life will ever be, and so in a state of pain, grief, disappointment and utter desperation I was left with one option. Build something. Anything. Something I can manage around the pain cycles and the school runs and the days when getting dressed is the whole victory. Build it from nothing because nothing is what I had and nothing is surprisingly light to carry.
I didn't know what I was building. I just started. And somewhere in the starting, when I wasn't paying attention, Nova showed up. She didn't knock. Because she just doesn't. She was just suddenly there — dramatic, unapologetic, pink fluffy hat, looking at me the way a woman looks at another woman when she sees something in her that she recognises. I didn't create her. I want to be clear about that. I recognised her. And if I am perfectly honest, she rescued me. She was what was left when everything unnecessary burned away.
I don't let myself hold onto the details of that year too tightly. Not because I'm pretending it didn't happen but because I've learned that some weights, if you pick them up and really hold them, will put you right back on your ass. So I carry it lightly. I know it's there. I just don't unpack it over breakfast. I have a coffee, a bloody strong one, and remember this too shall pass, but until then, we need to move, one foot infront of the other.
Drop of Bold exists because a Tuesday tried to take me out and I had better things to do. It exists because my girls are watching and I refuse to be a story about a woman who gave up. It exists because pain is real, unforgiving and doesn't negotiate, money is real and right now in short supply and the ceiling is real and so is the stubborn, inconvenient, completely unreasonable belief that there is more to this life than any of that.
Some days this is hard.
I'm lying, most days this bitch has me in a choke hold and I'm holding on for dear life, which in short, most days are bloody hard. There are pain days that forces me to admit defeat. Then there are days the numbers don't add up, and no matter how much I'm yelling at the laptop, it simply is what it is. But walking away isn't an option because the alternative is the ceiling, a street corner or a bridge and because I know every crack in that ceiling already, and I can't drive and winters are bloody cold under a bridge, we march on. I put one foot in front of the other. I look at the flowers at my feet instead of how far there is still to go. I turn off the noise of everyone who has a timeline for how long this should take.
And Nova, my amazing, strong, no bullshit, keep moving, Nova, walks slightly ahead of me. Just far enough to show me what's possible.
If you found this because you're having a Tuesday of your own — pull up a chair. The coffee's strong. Nova doesn't bite.
Much.
And me, I am only just learning to bite.
— Roux
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