Cal literally became my other half during those two weeks immediately post-op. It was great... until it wasn't....
Ooof those two weeks were a doozy. A lot of the little details are a blur, but the overall gist I do remember. The three main feelings were guilt, painxiety, & misery. Guilty because my Mom and Dad couldn't take care of me the way only Cal could. Guilty because my own misery was making Maya oh so anxious and sad. My poor sister has had anxiety since she was like 5. She hates crying in front of people and so when I was visibly upset, she was too and wanted to hide it for the sake of my parents. Lastly, the feeling of complete misery, not being able to move a whole lot during that month post-op. My loss of agency and loss of exercise boiled inside of me. And amongst the pain, one feeling became a consistent one, dependency.
Once I was able to move around a bit more on my own, it was time for Cal to return to his parent's house and get working. This is when I went into a deep sense of depression. I felt like I was on my own now to do everything. Get meds, get ice, get more pillows, etc. But the hardest part was at night. When the entire house went quiet and I was alone with my pain and intrusive thoughts. No tv show or movie could keep me distracted enough. As time went on ( a whole week) I was able to drive on my own and get to physical therapy. I was excited to finally feel like I was getting better. But, alas I was reminded of my limitations only being a month and 2 weeks post-op.
Physical therapy consisted mainly of stretching and massages. It wasn't the exercise I was yearning for. It was also dragging on for what felt like 6 months. At this point, there was no way I was going to be able to write notes and look down at a book for at least another month or so. However, this school year would like a lot different. Everything was going to be online. So, naturally, my parents wanted me to stay home, but with my mental health deteriorating, I needed a sense of normalcy, and being in Redlands for school was the norm. I contacted my girlfriends and we began looking for apartments for the four of us. It was finally something I could look forward to. For the first time, I would really have my own space in college. No RAs to get upset about weed, no noisy people, just good vibes with close friends. It felt like the perfect healing environment. I didn't have to sit and walk around classes. I could just do class online, in bed lying down if needed. I once again contacted the disability center at school and got note-takers, extensions when needed, and permission to attend classes off-camera.
My parents took a minute to come around to the idea of me going to Redlands. At first, they simply thought that just because Cal was going that I too HAD to go. Well, yes of course I didn't want to be far from him, but 95% of my reasoning, was my mental health. Like many during the lockdown, my depression worsened. Not only could I not go anywhere, but I also couldn't escape my pain either. It made the trapped, panic attack-inducing, suffocating, self-hating intrusive thoughts. Those nights I spent awake and miserable in pain, had made their mark. It was the first time in my life that I understood the term "suicidal ideations" (more on this next post I promise) That other 5%? It was my love and the level of dependency I knew I had with Cal. It comforted me knowing that I could sleep over with him on nights when my pain was really bad and felt taken care of. And the nights, that I felt my baseline new pain, well I would stay at my apartment. It made me feel ready to get a better sense of independence.
Fast forward to the start of the semester and I was all moved into my apartment. Gwenny, my roomie, and I bonded quickly. She was the most caring and considerate person I had ever met. We had known about each other since our freshman year, but with the number of meds, I could not recall our first introduction. Nonetheless, despite our different upbringings, we had TONS in common. However, there was one thing that I still severely struggled with, sleep.
In the first weeks of living in Redlands, I sleep most nights over with Cal. Why? Well, for one, all of his friends also smoked, so it was nice to be able to smoke openly without any judgment or fear of being inconsiderate. Gwenny knew I smoked, but had never really been around the actual flower smell and smoke. So, I would only smoke my pen at the apartment. Two, oxytocin. It is crazy just how much my anxiety and depression would ease up the more cuddle time I got at night to sleep. It was the main thing that helped me relax into a peaceful night of sleep (for five hours at least). This made me feel so guilty. I had my own apartment, and my own roommate, and yet I still felt this emotional and physical dependency on Cal. No, not in a sexual way haha, more like actually massaging out very tight and tense muscles in my thoracic and cervical spine. It was either do this or take the maximum dose of baclofen every single night. Baclofen is a great medication, but it had a tendency to mess up my stomach and make me utterly groggy/zombie. This, plus my stiff pain in the morning, made it so hard to get up and get the day started. So, it really helped to have someone in bed with me to wake me up. I didn't want to put that pressure or sense of responsibility on Gwenny. But, again, I hated this amount of dependency on Cal. However, there was one thing about spending so much time with Cal and his housemates that was slowly becoming more and more triggering.
You see, Cal had moved into the baseball house with his teammates. I was beyond happy for him to have that time to bond with them during the weird fall ball season they were having due to Covid. So, this meant A LOT of baseball talk. No, baseball itself wasn't the issue. It was when they would start talking about how excited they were for the season to start back up. That's when it hit me, this was the first year of my life that I wasn't part of a softball team. Don't get me wrong, I loved hanging out with the guys, we actually ended up with a friendship that I will cherish forever, but with my pain increasing, the more it felt like it was getting rubbed in my face. I know they would never, but man was it hard to be around all their conversations surrounding their love of the game. And, baseball was constantly THE topic. Even the video games they would play, MLB the show, and SuperSluggers. I know, these might seem like minuscule things to you, but it just felt like a constant reminder of the love I had lost.
The more time I spent with Gwenny during the day, the closer we got. It made me realize how much I missed having that ONE girlfriend you tell everything. I opened up to her about my loss of identity, increasing anxiety, and my growing resentment towards all things that reminded me of softball. I remember oh so clearly, each of us in bed, not able to sleep due to an active mind filled with anxiety. It's a night I will cherish forever because she and I felt like we could lean on each other to get that sense of confidence and independence.
I had an open and honest conversation with Cal ( after having a major panic attack). I explained how I needed his help to accomplish my goal of independence. So, we set up sort of a loose schedule. I would sleep at my own apartment during the week (with exceptions like terrible pain nights or whatever) and spend the weekends with Cal. You see, this worked out because most of the time on the weekends, Gwenny was super busy with Church activities and meeting up with friends for hikes and fun adventure days. All things, I couldn't really do without compromising my physical work stamina/ hand endurance.
Spending those weeknights with Gwen became some of my favorite nights of college. Our other two roommates were rarely around so we had the entire apartment. We would stay up late talking about our anxiety, depression, pain and so much more. She is the reason I got through that first semester. The number of times she would help me with daily tasks out of sheer love and support made me feel oh-so blessed. It also made me realize that it was not shameful to ask for help from others. She would also remind me that even though I was in pain, my pain didn't need to define me. And as for my growing anxiety about anything baseball related, she made me feel heard. I had severely missed having that one girlfriend who you would tell anything and everything. I could feel my anxiety begin to diminish each day I was around her light.
Her friendship also made the weekends more personal with Cal. Instead, of worrying about spending so much time around baseball and not being able to cherish time with him, I found myself feeling free to love him, baseball and all. We would plan date nights on Fridays, and then the rest of the weekend we spent hanging out smoking, playing Mario Kart, going to the beach/Joshua tree/new place, and finally, feeling like life was back to normal. Covid was still rampant, so we created social bubbles. Mine consisted of Gwenny and our other roomies plus Cal and his housemates. The more time I spent with his housemates, the more I saw them as friends rather than Cal's close teammates, a fact I couldn't help but feel sad about. For the first time, I didn't have any other time obligations other than focusing on school and my health. Life was starting to have some sort of balance of living with pain and simply living.
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