Skipping DVD

My bunion obliteration surgery has given me a 6-week pause of life. On the one hand, it's completely frustrating and hard and persevering. It's struggle and strife all wrapped into a soft cast, a painful post foot operation feeling and buried between feeling like someone sliced open my foot and is trying to break the bones in half. I think once the pain is gone I'll be able to focus more on the pause of life part that it brings and less on the agony, the horrible, terrible agony that i feel every day, more so as I try to put weight on it and walk around the house (with my crutches). Oh, I'll probably consider it more of a pause of life when I can leave the house and see the beautiful California sun (which will be gone when I can get out). I also can't take a shower without my mother's help. I can't wash dishes, cook food, get a drink of the refrigerator, can't put a movie in the DVD player unless I carry it between my teeth.

What I thought was a break from life turned out to be more humbling than I anticipated...I knew it would be humbling, but the last time my parents served me was in middle school when I was mugged. Ever since then, even before then, as the oldest, I don't really remember a time when I wasn't helping out around the house, even sometimes putting the spaghetti sauce away for the babysitter that forgot.

Not being able to exercise is harder than I thought as well. Not just because I mentally or emotionally need it but because my body is so tense and so sore and so knotted up from bed rest that all i want to do is go for a run and run it out. Plus, I minus the natural things that exercise did for my body. Having been so active ever since I was born and never really taking a break from it, my system is going crazy (those are probably details I should leave out in a public blog).

Not being able to drive is a pain too. My parents are mostly annoyed that their errand-running-youngest-daughter's-chauffuer is out of commission and that they are back to doing everything. Which I guess is understandable if you've had extra drivers to help you do things for the last 8 years and now all of a sudden, you have none.

I'm trying to figure out how it's a break from life when it seems to just be a struggle. Where is the pause? I feel like a broken record, a skipping DVD that just can't seem to find where it should start again.