Lilly

Showers are a little complicated. My dad went to the drugstore last week and came home with a wide range of what amounted to plastic bags shaped kind of like legs; I slide one on and seal it at the knee, above where my cast hits, and I can then fling myself bodily into the water without fear. Except for, you know, the whole standing thing, since I’m still one-footed until further notice.

Crutches are a little complicated. Our school gym is two blocks away from the main building—long, university campus-sized blocks—and although I’m excused from regular P.E., I’m often reduced to hobbling a quarter of a mile down the road and back for mandatory health seminars and the like. Pavement is killer to navigate, and I swear I’m getting calluses on my sides, but at least I’m getting a workout somehow.

School is a little complicated. Thankfully we have an elevator, so that takes a load off my back—sometimes literally, if I have friends tagging along to help me with my bags—but there is no decrease in the mental weight, especially as we round the corner of our first marking period. Early application deadlines for a lot of colleges passed this weekend, and I submitted my first few just days ago. If anything, it’s even more real now than it was when I was plowing through essay after essay. Now all there is to do is wait. I’ll be hearing back from schools by Christmas.

Some things…aren’t so complicated. As of this week, I’m 17 years old—that’s simple addition. My older brother is home for a few days and continues to be one of the coolest people I know—that’s practically a given. Even in the midst of all these exams and deadlines and post-op appointments, life goes on (would that be a theorem or an axiom?). I do have a calculus test in two days and—OK, yeah, that’s a little complicated. ♦