fractures and feelings

[my splinted arm in a punching fist against a chalkboard wall with writing on it.]

As I get ready to enter my tenth month of travel, all decisions I make acquire more finality and take me further from my initial vision for this project. My instinct is to say: woo yeah I have no regrets!!!, but it's not so simple. Although each place I've landed has been right for me at the time, there are so many places unexplored – so many wonderful people I reached out to in the initial stages of planning my Watson that I won't get to meet in person this year. I'm disappointed about that. In deciding how to spend my remaining months, I've had to weigh difficult factors and ask hard questions:

Where am I at – physically, mentally, emotionally? How much energy do I have left and how can I spend it in ways that are compassionate, engaged, creative, soulful, and sustainable? What factors allow me to participate more fully and more joyfully in my adopted communities? What challenges am I ready to face, and what challenges do I need more time to grow into?

Sometimes the honest answers are painful because they highlight the distance between who I am and who I'd hoped I was.

The Watson promotes independence. Three years ago the protagonist of my adventure-story would've been rustic, rugged, and defiantly independent: with hiking boots and calf muscles and scraped knees and enormous backpack. And a massive container of ibuprofen. She would've camped, bus-ed, taken unexpected side-roads and braved all kinds of terrain no matter how bumpy, no matter what barriers. She would have had a completely different itinerary that would likely have taken her further from the traditions, architectures, performances, and ideologies familiar to her.

I know that protagonist because up until two years ago, she was at the forefront of all my life-stories and wild dreams. But the thing about that protagonist is that she was in constant physical pain and was constantly incurring long-term damage to her body without thinking twice about it. What's more, she harbored some severe self-hatred and denial because she felt like she deserved that pain – like it was somehow a marker of assimilation and success: a small price to pay for this version of normalcy.

Okay I'm sorry but WHAT THE CUSS.

This year I've been thinking a lot about how doctors care for OI patients, especially kids – and there is so much emphasis on walking. While in Montréal in September I met up with a leading OI specialist at Shriner's Hospital for Children, where I had been treated a few times as a kid. He gave me a refreshingly rare piece of advice: use your wheelchair whenever you want to or need to! Walking around the house a bit each day is more than enough for you personally to keep your bones healthy (every body is different) – other than that, do whatever allows you to keep living the busy, active life you are living.

I was so relieved I almost cried. Walking is convenient and it's cool that I'm able to do it some of the time. I plan to continue it. It's messed up how much smoother the world is for walkers - it gives me unfair access and privileges, which I am now sharply aware of. Also it's nice to stretch my legs and use my body in different ways. But honestly? Spending the last three weeks almost entirely on foot in order to heal my hand fracture has made me realize how much more comfortable I am covering distance on wheels. Leaving access and ableism out of this for a second – on wheels I am calmer, faster, more adventurous, more patient, and in a lot less pain. The constant hum of calculations I need to do when I'm walking somewhere (is that pain a fracture or just regular chronic pain? how much further are we going? will people be patient if I need to slow down? will I be able to rest if I need to? will it be dangerously crowded once we get there? should I turn back? can I afford to rush? can I afford to be late?) disappears. Ahh, a clear brain for a second.

Adding access and ableism back into the equation, the clear brain fills right up again. There's a whole new set of calculations that I need to consider in order to navigate the world on wheels (where are the curb cuts? what is the slope? is the place we're going accessible? are people going to be weird about this? will I be able to get on and off the bus without enduring public humiliation?). But at least I don't have to make these calculations while in pain, and I'm not risking consequences that include long-term damage to my body.

Wheeling through the world has invited me into a more complex relationship with independence, has forced me to face the naivety and brashness of my former fake-normal protagonist, and has challenged me to reassess adventure-rhetoric. There are ways in which my wheels offer me more freedom, flexibility, and yes – independence – and also ways in which they require me to ask for help, have difficult conversations, hitch rides with people, settle into accommodating homes and cities for longer, say no when things just don't feel feasible (not something I ever used to do!), wait on, cancel, or change plans according to access needs and ease, let some things go. Things which arguably compromise my 'independence' and admittedly sometimes cause me to cover less ground. But I've noticed that they also have the potential to deepen and enrich my engagement with a place, and especially, my relationships with people.

Dominant narratives of independence and adventure are so strong that I often have to remind myself that I exist and convince myself that I'm not lazy, comfort-seeking, advantage-taking, or wrong in the way I'm approaching this whole Watson thing. I sometimes wonder what my year would have looked like on foot – if I had succeeded in acquiring that magical “get out of disability free pass” for the year. Or even if I succeeded in being one of the wheeled superhumans who manage to be more able-bodied than most able-bods. In the end, all I can really do is admit that neither of these are true for me, try to hold the complexity of it all and be with it as it is, feel things as I feel them, see things as they are.

I was a kid who used to cry at the end of every day because the day was over. I've always been acutely aware of impermanence, and sometimes debilitatingly aware that one choice made means infinity choices missed out on. I am saddened by the missed opportunities to meet and connect with people, disappointed by the unexplored possibilities. But I am also so heart-wrenchingly grateful for the places I have been, the people I have connected with, and the experiences I have had. In their own way, each has challenged me, each has helped me unfold another piece of myself.

Before I left Australia my friend Beks gave me a tarot reading. One of the cards was particularly gorgeous in its simplicity: in the upper right corner, a human figure falling/flying – arms and legs outstretched across an otherwise blank, blue-fading-to-pink expanse. The card was “Trust.”

So here I go: softly, openly, falling into the blue-pink expanse of the choice I've made, which in this case has landed me in a patch of budding daffodils.