2005-03-31 - 10:29 a.m.
One year ago today I went to an interview for the job I had last summer (at the Providence Plan). The interview went well, but getting up from the table at the end, I felt a little weird and wobbly. I left the office and walked across downtown Providence to the train station (I was still living in Boston). The walk was almost at the limit of my range, but I�d done it before. The last block is over a bridge and up a slight hill. That day I felt totally drained in a way I never had before. I could barely put one foot ahead of the other. I could barely make it. It was really scary.
Right next to the train station is an office building owned by my old employer, a development company (we didn�t usually hold on to buildings we�d built, but we had a few). Before my time at Brown, going to Providence usually meant I had to deal with some problem at this place. I think it had been built for American Express, but at the time it had become a back office for some other financial company (it�s vacant now).
I fell down right in front of it. Totally sprawled forward. I�m now pretty good at falling down without hurting myself, as I do it almost every day, but this was quite painful. Two people were smoking in front of the building and were pretty alarmed to see me grab pavement right in front of them. They helped me up and over to lean against a wall and catch my breath. �Sorry, I guess I�m having a bad day. God, I�m just going next door to the train.� An older guy helped me walk the last 200 or so feet. He seemed pretty concerned. Fortunately, I don�t think I was bleeding. I made my train though.
I recovered somewhat on the train back and took a cab to the airport. It was spring break. Alithea and I were going on vacation to San Francisco. SF is very hilly and not a good place to have mobility problems. Yeah, I got sun poisoning and frightening edema there. But the other problem I had was I couldn�t always walk so well. Sometimes I could make it the eight or so blocks to Union Square or to PacBell from our parking spot, but sometimes I had to lean on Alithea�s shoulder to get around the corner. In retrospect, I�m very impressed with her. I�m afraid she�s not the most giving or flexible person inherently and coping with this must have been quite a bit to handle. I�m sure it made her think a lot about potential futures she faced with me. Although things were already kind of rocky with us (maybe they had been for a long time), I�m sure this started the thought process of her breaking up with me the next month.
I never fully recovered from that attack. I got myself a cane shortly after I got back (my initial thoughts on it are in this entry). I still commuted from Boston down to school and to work through early June. But I couldn�t walk downhill anymore the few blocks from the train station to the bus plaza. I took a short cab ride from the train station up to school (not economically sustainable over the long term, but okay for the last month of class).
Later on, to get to work, I took a bus across the street from the train to downtown and then walked the four blocks to my office (through the Arcade, America�s oldest indoor shopping mall from 1828!). When I moved to Providence, I took the trolley from my corner to Kennedy Plaza and made the same four-block walk. In August I got a lot worse and couldn�t do the walk at the end. I didn�t know what to do. I would usually take a cab to work, although I�ve since learned that Rhode Island has a pretty good paratransit service.
Looking back, I had a really hard time coming to terms with becoming disabled. Not to mention being newly single, moving to a different city, et al. I barely wrote in this journal, leaving up this piece about the Red Sox (poorly timed, as they went on to win the Series) until I recounted that girl hitting on me. Was I the same person? I felt sometimes like an entirely different entity. Recognizing that I am in fact still the same rock�n�roll boy as always has been the hardest thing I�ve ever had to learn.
So now I�ve had a visible disability for a year. I�ve learned a lot. Dumb little things through trial-and-error, like how to take a fall or how to mouse and eat left-handed or how to get around my apartment. More than that, I�ve learned a lot about myself. I never would have thought I was capable of handling this. But I do. Every day is just one damn thing after another. Isn�t everyone�s day like that, though. Am I a stronger person? I don�t think I knew what strong meant before. I�ve been thinking about it a lot recently and maybe I�ll post something if I figure it out. Or even if I don�t.
One year. I�ll be around for a lot more.
� 2005 Geoff Gladstone
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