MRI & Tentative Future Plans
I sprained my knee a week ago dancing to “Mr. Brightside” and had to go to the hospital. It was a sort of humiliating experience in some ways. My physicality is very much up for discussion in this country—or if not discussed, avoided with commitment. I’ve mentioned before that my body is simply outside the realm of normalcy here, while in America it is most average. Actually, I think my body is outside of the realm of possibility here. To China, it simply does not exist. I felt ashamed to injure myself, ashamed to draw attention to my body at all. I feel like I am being judged for this injury—if I were smaller, maybe it wouldn’t have happened? But I know this isn’t true. I have had joint issues all of my life. I remember talking about my knee with my pediatrician. This injury also came after a week of intensive ED behavior involving over-exercising and a fixation with my watch statistics.
The hospital visit itself was rather interesting, though getting injured on our fellows bonding trip was not ideal. We took an expensive cab to the hospital recommended by our insurance, but I do believe it was worth it. They prescribed me painkillers and put me through extensive X-rays and an MRI. I was also given traditional Chinese medicine sprays, which I thought was sort of beautiful juxtaposed with the Apple store-like hospital and all of the scientific testing. We all know my takes on biomedicine (itself an ethnomedicine). My doctor delivered my MRI results to me via WeChat.
Since then I have been so limited in what I can do comfortably. I miss riding my bike and walking around the city. I haven’t left the apartment in nearly 48 hours because I do not want to stress my leg. On Thursday I proctored an exam and had to stand for two hours—the result was more pain on Friday. I feel sort of othered and alone as a result, although those feelings are also a culmination of lots of other circumstances of being in another country while it feels like life goes on without you in a half-world across the globe. I am not confident about my relationships in America. They seem to be going a little off the rails. But also, I am a little off the rails. The future I had imagined for myself when I left, a future that was a continuation of the life I was leaving (as if I could just pause and return), no longer seems entirely possible or even preferable. I find that funny because when I left I very much saw that life as the real one, the one I would come back to. Now as I said, the life happening in Philadelphia feels like a fake one. How could it be 4 AM there when it is so clearly DAY?
I think it could be helpful to me not to see my life in such clear-cut steps. Instead of chunks of being, I am experiencing phases that blend into one another. This is all part of the path of my life, less like chapters or steps or anything concrete. It is all a lot more liminal, more like waves. Seeing it in such defined pieces has made me feel like my life is progressing without any growth. It makes me feel like I am just climbing a stairway to death. This is not the outlook Nora McInerny (or my Pennsylvania therapist) would want for me. I think it would behoove me to consider the gray area.
