Jane's Brain

Well, hello my dear reader.

It’s the end of 2025 and I am sitting on the window seat in my kitchen in a knee brace.

I had never gotten surgery before, and when the doctor told me I would be recovering for 8 weeks, I didn’t really know what that meant. I was mostly thinking with the perspective that I wanted to pursue something new. I had had this knee injury since I was 8 or 10, playing recreational soccer. I took one wrong step, twisted my knee, and my patella and ligament weren’t the same ever since.

I figured, now, as a 24 year old, it was time to make some adjustments. I didn’t want to go into another year with the same life I had always been living. I want to be pain free while I wear heels, dance, learn karate, and finally participate in life as though nothing was wrong with me. Normal running, normal walking, normal girl.

To get there, my body has to go through the now. I have to have my leg constantly straight, weighed down by an extra 20 pound brace that I’m locked into, which feels like it’s never in the right place. I can’t tell where my knee is, under all the bandaging, and I don’t know know where it’s supposed to be, either. And, I’m assuming it’s also naturally just uncomfortable anywhere because I’ve lived with my knee in a completely different place for the past 15 years than it is now surgically amended to.

Every morning, I take time to take care of myself. I put on anti perspirant that the hospital gave me because I still have not showered yet. My mom told me she’ll wash my hair in the sink–it’s beyond knotted now. I brush my teeth, floss, put on new underwear using a technique that feels like I’m fishing, trying to get the left leg hole on my foot by using my crutch. I stretch the underwear to reach my hand, and I pull, lifting my leg with my other hand to get the fabric past my heel. I take my medicine. I spray a body mist I took from my sister who hasn’t noticed it’s been missing for the past 9 months.

My mom helped me onto the window seat in our kitchen this morning. I was watching the Blue Jays eat from the deer feeder my dad put up in our backyard. I started playing Blackbird by The Beatles, and tried to be as nonchalant as possible when I started to cry, listening to the lyrics, “Take these broken wings and learn to fly…” I felt like a broken bird, taking my broken wings, learning to fly, into the light of a deep dark night.

My mom, oblivious, was fussing behind me to try to find a charger for my sister’s speaker, because she wanted to hear The Beatles “na hlas” (out loud, in Slovak). She suddenly says she needs to poop. I’ve been constipated for 4 days because they say that’s what narcotics do to the body. She made us both smoothies this morning to help us poop. I’ve also been taking laxatives twice a day to no avail. “This will be you soon,” she says, running to the bathroom. I’m shaking with laughter and tears.

4 days down, and a beautiful, incredibly short, lifetime to go.