Tomorrow never comes

I'm a procrastinator. Apparently I'm really good at it. I've been avoiding lots of things -- reading, writing, blogging, getting in touch with old friends -- until I had more time. For the last 6 weeks I have had absolutley no excuse. I have nothing but time, flat on my back, to tell you the truth.

There is more to me than being shy and lovelorn. Alot more. I'm intelligent and funny and I truly care about people and want nothing more than for everyone around me to be happy.

I'm also terribly accident-prone.

This is different than being just plain clumsy. I'm clumsy as well as accident-prone, but the accidents that find me are the ones that do all the damage.

When I was a kid, I fell off our side porch. I was pretending the edge of it was a balance beam and... well... I missed. If I were a guy, odds are I wouldn't be able to have children.

On a high school field trip I got knocked upside the head by a kid who was goofing off the bus. Concussion.

In college, I was in Europe for the first time and managed to break my foot. Pressure fracture from too much walking.

In the space of eight months, I broke my left arm twice. The first time, I'm still not sure how it happened. The best solution I can come up with is that I rolled on it in my sleep. All I know is it started to ache and swell and after a few days I thought, Maybe I should go to the doctor... The second time was less of a mystery. I tripped on a board with wheels (not a skateboard) and caught myself with the arm that has previously been broken.

But this summer is the mother of all accidents. I was sitting in a boat and broke my back. All I was doing was sitting there, and in a split second, my summer went from packed with awesome activities to three months of a crappy back brace, lots of bedrest and prayers that I don't have to eventually have surgery.

I've learned a couple of things about myself with my various accidents over the years. First of all, I'm stronger than I ever thought I could be. When I broke my foot, I didn't know for over a week. I climbed a mountian. I was in Europe, for Pete's sake, I wasn't about to sit in my hotel room and whine about my suspiciously swollen foot. The moment the boat accident happened, I was in probably the worst pain of my life, but my first thought was, I just ruined our whole day! How can they ever forgive me? (I was with my aunt, uncle, cousin and his fiancee.) I didn't cry, throw up or pass out. In restrospect, passing out might not have been that bad.

Second, I have a rather high pain tolerance. I know some men (*cough* my father *cough*) who whine more about a head cold than I do about having a broken back. I have been subjected to plenty of painful tests over the years and have managed to survive them all without screaming, fainting, crying, or whining. I think you just deal with what you have to deal with, and that's it. Whining and crying doesn't help. Don't know about fainting....

Basically, you have to deal with what you have to deal with, and I don't know if anyone knows how strong they are until they have to deal with something that actually tests that strength.

Wow. I just wrote a whole blog post. Yay me! Now, to keep this up....