“I’m flying!”
And then I wasn’t. The earth rushed quickly to meet my body. But for some reason I still flapped my arms like a butterfly.
I hit the earth like a rock. My left wrist rolled and cracked from the impact.
“Oh no.” My oldest brother’s face was sheer panic.
He picked me up and ran into the church building. As I cried and told him *it hurts*, his voice shook in fear, as he told me it would be ok.
We were just playing a game. I was around 6 and he was around 14. He was throwing me up high in the air and then catching me. Each time he threw me a liiitle higher. But one time, he threw me really high and then I think he must of realized I was coming down too fast. He got out of the way and I wasn’t expecting it.
It wasn’t his fault. He was playing with his little brother and he wasn’t trying to hurt me. We were just having some fun. Passing time together on a lazy Sunday. I loved every second of it. He was my hero. And I still love him with all my heart.
I went to the ER. Left wing wrapped in magazines and rubber-bands.
It was a metacarpal break. A bunch of bones in your wrist that come together where your hand bends and rotates. Mine had come apart.
The doctor grabbed my left wrist and said, “This is going to hurt.”
Holy fuck it did. He twisted my wrist bones. I heard crunching. My bones crackled like a taco shell.
It didn’t occur to me then that setting my broken wrist would be more painful than breaking it. A shock of electricity from my wrist straight to the center of my brain.
How a doctor can set bones without seeing them… that’s a gift.
Anyway. I got a cast and was told not to be super active. My mom rolled her eyes.
And then I had my cast on for awhile. People signed it. And they all wanted the story. Everywhere I went. I enjoyed my little moment of celebrity. And I told my story over and over again.
And I’d usually say *my brother broke my arm*.
Haha! He hated that. I didn’t mean it like it sounded. I was a little kid and didn’t know how that sequence of words would make adults think something I wasn’t saying.
HE didn’t break my arm. It was an accident. He had some culpability in it. It was a little reckless but in no way did I (or do I now) hold it against him. Because I knew he wasn’t trying to hurt me. We flew a little too close to the sun and got burned.
There was miscommunication. I think he thought, that I thought, that he wasn’t going to catch me on the last throw. I didn’t know that. The earth caught me though.
I just thought he was going to throw me up in the air again, I’d flap like I was flying and then come back down into his arms.
And as I write this, I realize my real life experiences often sound like shitty metaphors! Haha!
One minute you’re flying high and the next, you’re hurtling to the earth. Crashing and burning.
I’m ambidextrous, so it took a little while getting used to just using my right hand. But to this day, I still use both my hands for primary tasks.
I write with my… right hand. But I eat with my left hand. I can switch hit in baseball. And when I video edit, I use keyboard prompts from both sides.
Weird info… bottom line, a broken wrist didn’t really change the trajectory of my range of motion.
But that was my first lesson on how our bodies CAN break. As a little kid, you think you’re invincible. You think you can fly. And then life knocks you around. Sometimes a lot. And some get it more than others - or so it seems. We don’t know until we tell each other our stories.
But after wrist and skull fractures, stitches, and a whole mess of other injuries in my life, literal and metaphorical, I’m still here.
Still trying to find a way to fly.