Before pains from my fall at the communal spa have gone completely, I
accidentally got my foot caught in the heavy sauna door the other day. I
felt an electric shock in my foot that was swelling in an instant. The
pain was so severe that I could hardly breathe. I dreaded to think that I
had a broken bone. While thankfully it didn’t seem broken, I bruised
again, the arch and both sides of my right foot this time. I have been
living in pain so far, putting poultices on my foot and walking in large
shoes with a loosened shoelace. What shocked me more than injuries was
my recent careless behavior. I have seen myself become a blunderer and
lose my edge. Simply, I felt old.
Between the two injuries, there was another happening. I got a pin
that commemorated Disneyland’s 60th anniversary when I visited there a
few years ago. The limited-edition pin was sparkling and super cool. I
loved it so much that I hadn’t worn it because I couldn’t imagine how
devastated it might be if I dropped and lost it. I had displayed it on
the shelf for years but one day, I summoned courage and put it on my
sweater when I went out.
As I had thought, my courage had worn out by the time I headed home. I
just couldn’t bear the fear of dropping it any longer. I took it off
and put it in my bag. A couple of days later, I noticed it was missing. I
knew I had been a little drunk when I put it in my bag, but I couldn’t
remember exactly where I put it. I rummaged the entire bag through
pockets and pouches but it disappeared. I haven’t seen it since.
It has lingered on my chest and I’ve launched a closet-wide search
once in a while with no luck. Similar to the two accidents in the spa,
my behavior shocked me more than a loss of the pin. I was upset over my
mess incurred by a woeful lack of attention and my wretched state of
concentration. I feared that my brain activity has begun to deteriorate.
I confided my fear to my partner. While I conceded that I had become
old, he dismissed it easily. According to him, I had been like this
since he first met me in my teens. Because he has seen my blunders so
many, such as slipping on the wet sidewalk and opening the KFC’s
automatic doors by doing ‘Home Alone’ which startled the salesperson,
or, tripping on one of the stairs and rolling all the way down to the
platform of a train station, he thinks my mess is better than in my
twenties. He said that I was much more careless, messier and older in my
youth than now.
His comment reminded me of a box of my scarves that I lost about six
years ago. It was a cardboard box in which I stowed all my scarves that I
had gotten through sales and outlets. The treasure box for me was kept
in my closet. But one day, I found it missing. I had searched for years
all around my apartment but couldn’t find it. The box was too big to be
obscured by other stuff or to just disappear. I had developed numerous
theories about the mystery during those years, for example, a thief
exclusively for scarves took it, or my partner hid it out of spite, or
it was sucked into a black hole of my apartment and gone to the galaxy
far, far away. And then, it came out very unexpectedly, very casually.
When I straightened up the closet, I put a label to each box. I
mislabeled one box that was for scarves. All the while of my vigorous
search, it had sit right in front of my eyes with a false label on it.
Like my scarves, I hope that my pin also appears out of somewhere,
someday. It might as well though, I would have really grown dim by then
and forgotten about that I had it and lost it to begin with...
Saturday, June 15, 2019
A Fear of Aging hr619
Labels:
became old,
black hole,
broken bone,
careless,
Disneyland,
fall,
galaxy far far away,
pain,
pin,
scarves
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