Yesterday I was at Mass General like I am so many days since my accident nearly 10 years ago. I walked down the same halls with the same limp but instead of people glancing away or studying me closely to decide whether they thought I should be parked in a handicap parking spot, now, and since the bombings, people looked at me with a mixture of wonder and compassion. Like they see me now and think “I wonder if she is one of the ones”.
And I am not. I sat in my home during that horrific event and the days that followed and watched with the world the chaos in my city.
But I also am. I was a victim. I had a trauma. I almost died of catastrophic injuries to an artery that took with it my leg.
And after years of feeling like people were sizing me up or refusing to see me it's hard to explain how it felt to be held in that moment in love.
Because having life long medical issues is hard. It’s draining. At times it is demeaning.
And I want to tell those victims of the bombing who didn’t lose limbs, the ones that still look pretty much the same from the outside but instead suffered deep arterial wounds, nerve injuries and soft tissue damage, I want to tell those victims that it does get better but it also gets worse. And I wish someone told me that.
That in the first months you are buoyed by the outpouring of love from your friends, your neighbors, your surgeons, and your own faith and gratefulness. You are held high on the joy of just being alive.
But. Then.
The second year comes, and the third and you start to realize, slower than one might think, that being alive this new way is really really hard sometimes. And I remember month after month asking the doctors when will I get better and them saying you are better and me not being able to understand what that actually meant.
Because what those doctors were saying was this is as good as it is going to get for you.
And I did p/t and o/t and yoga breathing and acupuncture and meditation, and bio feedback and got infusions and pills and breathing treatments and tried every stupid suggestion that came my way. But.
I have a nerve injury. And I lost three quarters of my blood.
And these things change the very way your body works. And I will never ever walk the same again. I will not run, I will not dance, I will not hike a mountain or play kickball at a picnic or carry a child down the beach. I will use a crutch sometimes, forever. I may one day use a wheelchair.
And I did not understand that for literal years.
So every time I hear the media talk about how the victims will get back to the same things they were doing before the bombing I think, probably not. And that isn’t defeat or letting the terrorist win. And after suffering such a life altering event there shouldn't be such narrow parameter or imposed rules on each persons "injury success". If a person is sad or angry or doesn't go right back to the way things were before the bombing it is not failure. It is not depression. It is grace.
After my injury my body changed but so did who I am. I carry inside me a terrible truth that brings with it great pain, but also great knowledge. And I believe that more time should be spent on telling the injured to find peace, find solace, find a new way. Because the old you is no longer there. And the truth is you might find that you don’t even want the things you wanted before. You might find that different things are important to you.
And here at year 10 my leg is actually worse than it was at year 5. The pain and the function. And a catastrophic injury is always catastrophic. Many of us will never heal completely.
And living through this kind of trauma truly is a journey. One that no person would ever ask to take. And in this journey there are great losses and the kind of deep appreciation that only those who have been there will ever know. These are the gifts found deep in the fabric of each of us. Layered below the terror and the anger and the what if's. It is not easy. I see the faces of bewilderment on the injured and it takes me right back to those first days. Because life for some of them will never be easy ever again. But they will find their peace. And such great richness that they never knew or held before.
Give them time to heal. Let this be their home.
