I generally think of myself as a homebody, as someone who is not adventurous. In reality, I am juuuuuuuust adventurous enough to get myself into trouble. Take today for example: since it was such a beautiful day, I thought I’d take my book over to the park near my house and read outside for once.
the view from my porch this morning
I pictured myself sitting on the grass, basking in the afternoon warmth, book open on my lap. (Realistically, I probably would have ended up on a bench, because dog poop.) I put on a cute outfit, grabbed my tote bag, and headed out. It was going to be awesome, I knew it. I had a plan—well, sort of.
I had never been to this park before, so I googled the easiest way to get there. I did not look at the distance on Google Maps, so I didn’t realize it was a mile and a half walk just to get there by the suggested route. I also didn’t realize it would be up a massive hill. (OregonHikers.org tells me that the elevation gain is 690 ft. Is that a lot? It felt like a lot while I was climbing it.)
For whatever reason, Maps took me around the side of the park, so I entered through a back trail and got hopelessly lost. There was not a single place to sit and rest, let alone relax and read a book, and I was starting to get pretty nervous…this was not turning out to be the fun and easy outing I had anticipated.
What I expected:
photo by Khurt Williams on Unsplash
What I encountered:
photo by Lora Ninova on Unsplash
My phone was no help—it couldn’t seem to get a fix on my position in the park. I ended up using the compass feature, which still worked, thankfully. With the compass, I managed to come out the other end of the park…and right onto a highway with neither sidewalk nor shoulder to walk on, during rush hour traffic. Yikes. From there, it was a mile walk back to my apartment.
If I’d had good shoes on, maybe it could have been nice to take a surprise four mile hike, but no: I was wearing flip flops, so it was awful. I was limping on the edges of my feet by the time I got back home. I barely made it up the stairs to my apartment, and I had to stick my aching feet in an ice bath almost as soon as I got inside.
And now that I’m home safe, I’m worried about everything: were there ticks? Will I have bug bites I haven’t noticed yet? Did I accidentally brush some poison oak without noticing? I'm in pain, but my brain won't let me relax. Thanks, anxiety!
Since I have fibromyalgia, I can already tell that I pushed my body far past its limits, so I’ll be suffering tomorrow. In the worst case, I’ll be stuck in bed, using a cane to hobble to the bathroom, eating the food on the pantry shelves closest to my bed because I can barely move, or lying on the living room floor because I fell over and can’t get back up. (This has actually happened to me before. I lay there for an hour before someone came home and helped me up.)
As if all that weren’t enough, I’m having a massive hay fever reaction, but I can’t stand up long enough to find allergy meds, so I’m miserable on a whole other level. 😩
This is not, alas, the first time something like this has happened to me. Every once in a while, I decide to be spontaneous and go out to do something fun, and through lack of planning it all goes horribly wrong. It probably also won’t be the last time it happens—this is just the way I am. Not all my outings are disasters, of course, or I would never leave the house. And when things go right, it can be beautiful, which is part of how I keep ending up in these situations.
Another part is that my particular blend of mental and neurological stuff means I stress myself out worrying about the little things, and fail to think about the big things. Sometimes I wonder how anyone thinks I’m an adult—it’s obvious I don’t have it together the way adults are supposed to. Or maybe other adults fall and skin their knees, or set out to read in the park and mess up their body on an unplanned four mile hike. Are y’all just too embarrassed to talk about it?
Maybe it’s because social media can be curated. We can look however we want to others—and I’m also guilty of that sometimes, but since becoming disabled, I have been learning to share the hard times, as well as the good ones. I like being transparent and authentic as much as I can, because I think it helps me have real connections to other people. I know who will be there when I’m struggling, and my friends know that I will reciprocate, if I’m able.
Being vulnerable is hard, and not everyone is willing to do it on such public platforms. I get that, but it’s isolating when no one else seems to struggle the way I do. I need the blooper reel on other people’s lives!
How about it? Will you tell me about a time that things didn’t go the way you expected, and you felt really out of your depth? Drop it in the comments, and I will commiserate with you!
Pictures by me unless otherwise noted.
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