July 30, 2020
Declaring Itself
I've got glass in my foot, some tiny shard from a measuring cup or drinking glass dropped on the tile floor at my parents' beach house. I used to get frustrated when the kids spilled milk at dinner, dropped a plate as they cleared, let fall a bowl when baking. And sometimes I still do. But most of the time in the past few years, I've relaxed about spilled drinks and broken glasses and plates and umbrellas. We break things. We are tough on houses. We're not a rambunctious crew, but nearly nightly there is a spilled drink; nearly every summer we destroy an item at the beach house -- a lamp, a table umbrella (that was Connor and I together this year), the finish on the sideboard in the dining room (think: slime). Over the course of our year in an Italy apartment, we needed to get fixed or replace the following: a mirror that a child tried to pull off the wall to see whether there was a medicine cabinet; the ceiling where one child had thrown up slime, which took the paint off the ceiling with it when it fell back to the ground; a hallway light fixture (playing soccer in the house -- or was it football?); a few dishes and wine glasses.
So when Mary knocked over a measuring cup on Saturday morning and Sebastian knocked over a glass on Saturday evening, we talked about wearing shoes in the house to be careful. I'd gotten a shard of glass in my foot the week before when Sebastian broke a pane of glass in our back door at home, so the routine was fresh: sweep and vacuum, put the pieces in a paper bag rather than just the plastic trash bag.
Having just extracted with tweezers the shard from the broken pane at home, I was feeling great. Until I stepped on a new piece that Saturday evening. It hurt. A lot. I have a high tolerance for pain (not proud to say that I drove almost thirty miles home from work as my appendix was rupturing a year ago -- not safe for me or for the other people on the road; I just couldn't see an alternative in my state).
I tried extracting the newest shard of glass with tweezers there on the front porch. I soaked my foot in hot water and salt, just like the internet said to. I didn't see the glass, but I felt pretty sure that I got it out. For four days I hobbled around the house, hobbled on my walk each morning, hobbled down to the beach with my chair and books and iced tea. Eventually I would feel better, I thought. But feeling better and having less pain had to wait: these were four solo days at the beach house, three blocks from the beach, with hours upon hours to read and write and watch tv or movies and talk with girlfriends. I figured that the foot would improve or I would go to the doctor once I returned home.
One day on the phone with a friend who's a doctor, I asked her what to do about the foot.
"Is it swollen?" she asked.
"Nope."
"Put some bacitracin on it before you go to sleep, and if something is really wrong, it will declare itself," she said.
"What do you mean, declare itself?" I asked.
"Something will happen so that you'll know that you're not okay. You'll see swelling or pus or something like that. You won't be able to walk," she said.
I rubbed bacitracin on, wore shoes even around the house since that felt better, and convinced myself that it was getting better even though the pain persisted. Three nights later when I went to sleep I looked at my foot: completely swollen. By the next morning, my toes couldn't touch the ground, raised up by the swollen ball of my foot. As I overcompensated with my right leg, my right knee started hurting every time I walked on it. I had waited long enough: I had gotten in lots of reading and visiting and relaxing and walking. It was time to leave the beach a day early and go back home to a doctor.
I cleaned and packed, taking at least double the time as I limped and over-compensated and caused more damage to the left foot with the glass in it and the right leg that was trying to give the left foot a break. I cried because it hurt and laughed because I was talking to my sister on the phone.
When I finally got to Urgent Care hours later, they identified a definite infection and anesthesized the bottom of the foot, and dug in. No glass found. More scraped tissue now and a bigger incision, but no glass. We think that you actually did already get the glass out, they told me. It's the infection that's causing all pain and swelling.
They started me on antibiotics.
Until it didn't.
My friend, "Well, it certainly declared itself eventually!"
I think now, Maybe everything is like this, declaring itself eventually, and we have to decide finally what to do with the declaration. Sit with the pain or discomfort since it's tolerable for a while; let the pain settle under the skin until the declaration is huge and unavoidable. Is this what I did with the pain in my marriage? Maybe. Maybe it had to sit that long. Sit until the pain declared itself so powerfully that the only possible step was separation.
"Do the next right thing," I read somewhere, maybe in a Glennon Doyle book.
That's what I've been saying since the end of April, just the next right thing.
I don't know the next step. And when people ask, I tell them that I don't know. I tell them that I am waiting, living, being, waiting until the next step declares itself. Or more accurately, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to stop the thoughts of the what next what next what next -- divorce or get back together or keep the family together or live separately forever? It's hard to wait.
But I'm trying to trust that the next stone will appear above the water and I'll be able to step on it, feet freed from glass, simple and sure for that moment.
And really, I don't have to be sure that the stone or step is right.
If it's not, it will declare itself.
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