skip the merry-go-round

            It’s strange to think that one day you are going to be too tired to get up from your own seat. Too old to do the things you once did so easily. Every day you’re getting too old to use the excuses you once used to get out of commitments.

            I have caught a glimpse of how my future is going to be in the past few days. The swelling of my foot has gone down but the stiches are still in. I can’t walk around as I please which means I need assistance for everything. It feels like I am at a nursing home.

            There is seriously nothing to do but watch junk TV. I spent a whole day watching toddlers and tiaras until my eyes and brain went numb. Not every moment in life is going to be this wonderful and exciting experience. We need to go though moments like this to better appreciate those memorable days.

            While watching American horror story (one of the many shows I watched over the week) one of the characters said something that really stuck with me. “Some play it safe on the merry-go-round, others go for thrills on the roller coaster”. One day you’re going to be too old to get on that roller coaster so you might as well enjoy it now or else you’re going to live a life full of regret.

            It feels as though I got a second chance when I got in that accident. I’m not going to live my life with the YOLO motto but I do feel like we need to live life as if it were your last. One day your going to be old sitting in a couch immobile, remembering all those wasted hours you could have seized.

What is this all about?

            As I lay on this bed in the middle of Santiago at my aunts vacation home with the dangerous ceiling fan shaking as if it were to eventually fall over my immobile body, the numbness that I referred to before starts to wear off. I have been scared to write before on this site because I didn’t feel like there was a point to it. I didn’t feel like I had much to say. I didn’t think that my opinion was valid or enough.

            Maybe humor is something I use to distance myself from people. I showed up to my great grandmothers100^th birthday party in a wheelchair and a smile on my face. People came up to me all night asking me how I was feeling and what had happened. There were at least 200 people that attended the party. I would joke around with my family and the people that I didn’t know but politely pretended to recognize.  It would have been a lot harder if I told them the truth. If I had told them that I really was in pain and that I was still scared. I was scared about going back to school and possibly failing all of my finals.

            This numbness that I have felt was just me not fully understanding the situations that I had to face. Not once have I felt so sad in the last couple of days that I felt like dying. Not once have I felt awkward to the fact that my mom had to bathe me and that my sister had to cut up my food and that my father had to carry me up the stairs.

            Theses stiches are coming off soon and my scars are going to eventually fade away. All that I am going to be left with are these moments. I’m going to remember how my family came together in this unexpected moment and how my cousins rolled me around the country club during the party. Like most things in life, this too shall pass.

            I guess I was aiming towards writing about the awkward encounters that I have had throughout my life in this blog but, it seems like everything nowadays is considered awkward to the point that the word itself means nothing. So what is this all really about? This blog is really about the unconventional troubles that I go though and the thoughts that we all have (or at least I have) during these moments.

operation

It was like an episode of the walking dead. There was blood all over the crusty wall with chipped blue paint and there was only a desk lamp in the room for the doctor to operate with. We were at the policlinica in the countryside of the Dominican Republic. I was holding on tight to a distant cousin that I barely knew as the doctor inspected my wounds.

 The room was full of unfamiliar faces that stood behind the lamp making it hard to recognize them. The windows were all open letting in critters to the room and moths near the lamp. The doctor screamed at everyone to leave the room when I noticed my mother in the crowd. I screamed for her as the room cleared out and she made her way to me. I expected her to yell at me for being to stupid and getting on that 4x4, but she just held my hand and told me she loved me as she wiped the dirt from my face with a damp cloth.

The doctor asked if it was ok if she cut off my legging and I jokingly said that they weren’t even mine. There was now blood all over my mother’s shirt as the doctor poured saline all over my knee. I pulled my mothers face closer to mine to block the view of my legs. I felt the doctor scrub my knee and pull out rocks from it. The pain was blinding. I couldn’t breath.

I could hear all of my family praying outside the door in Spanish while the doctor said, “vamos a haces puntos.” I didn’t know what puntos meant but before I could ask I felt a poke and my knee went numb. I finally realized that puntos meant stiches. Even with the anesthesia I could feel a wave of pain come a go on my leg.

  As she made her way to my clean my foot that was also gushing blood I tried to focus on my breathing. I thought about how long it took for me to finally clear up the scars on legs from previous accidents. I thought about how all of this could have been avoided if I had just stayed at my grand fathers house. But what worried me the most was the horror stories that I’ve heard in the past about people going to hospitals in foreign countries. I didn’t know if the needle was sterilized and if the lady who was stitching me up was a real doctor.

After all the crying the doctor was finally done. I couldn’t feel my legs at all. She said that when I wake up the next day that the pain is going to be unbearable. Everyone thought that I had started crying again but I was really laughing.

Sometimes you need to find something to laugh at in dark times like these or else you’re going to end up feeling a lot worse then you really are.

The accident

     

I opened my eyes and saw them on the floor near the barb wired fence. Chris was on his back and muttered, “what the fuck?”  There was a cloud of dirt over us when I noticed the blood all over my hands. I started to panic and repeated, “what the FUCK!” over and over again when I noticed that my foot was caught under the 4x4. I screamed at them to get it off of me but it didn’t look like they were in any position to help me. Teddy soon realized I was screaming and picked up the cart off of me with no problem.

I stood on the edge of the road looking down the steep mountain full of rocks and palm trees. My mind was blank and I didn’t feel anything. I was numb.

A car full of ladies dressed in club wear stopped to check on us but I was the only one who was responding to them. Without hesitation I got into their car. The ride back I started laughing in panic and I could tell that I was freaking the ladies out. How is it that I am full of dirt and blood but my shades aren’t broken? I started laughing because I was amazed that I was alive.

 It was when I got into my aunts house that I noticed that my foot was gushing out blood from my shredded flowery Toms. The door to the house was open but no one appeared to be home. I walked to the bathroom and washed my hands and my cousins started shouting for my aunt. As I inspected my face I couldn’t tell if I had messed up my face because it was full of dirt and I couldn’t feel a thing.

My aunt came out of her bedroom and I told her I wanted to go to the hospital. She grabbed her keys and took me to my grandfather’s house instead. I walked up the hill to his house angry because I didn’t know why my aunt would take me here instead of the hospital. As I walked up through the porch and into the living room I threw myself onto the rocking chair. That’s when I noticed that Chris and Teddy had disappeared.

As I sat on the rocking chair I started picking out rocks from my knee while my aunt and cousins started asking me questions about how it happened. It’s been an hour now since the incident and they finally decided to help me out and take me not to the hospital but, to the local polyclinic.

The policlinica is a beaten up little clinic that had no electricity. In fact the whole town was out of electricity at the time. By then I couldn’t walk and my father who was already there had to carry my in with the help of several people who guided him through with their flashlights.

The whole time I was just thinking what If I never got in that car? What if we were going slower? Why didn’t we go back once the road stopped being paved? What if I died?

best country in the world

“Welcome to the best country in the world” he said as he grabbed by luggage and put it in his car. I just landed in to the Dominican Republic for the first time in 6 years. The last time I was here was for my grandmother’s funeral. After that I swore I would never come back. I hated this country and a part of me still does.

            This place couldn’t possibly be the best country in the world. As we drove down the narrow road towards the resort we would pass by abandoned houses that were halfway done. They were all made out of cement bricks. We drove down what seemed like a ghost town. The fences consisted of barb wire that wrapped around sticks of wood.

            The men would stare you down as you’d walk to the corner store and whistle at you. Every day you would hear a horror story about a delinquent murdering cops and stealing cars. You had to be careful with your things even with the people you think you trust most.

            As we went farther down the road the houses started to disappear and we were driving towards a great mountain. There were palm trees that swayed with the wind and cows all over. The sky was bright blue and the temperature was perfect. I felt like crying for hating this country so much. It doesn’t feel like the safest place in the world but it is the most beautiful place I have ever been to.