Dinosaurs and Vampires.

Yesterday was the first time I was able to make it over to my best friends house to hangout since the summer.  Because of my new mobility issues, there are very few friends I can visit easily.  For those that have steps entering their house, I require lifting and assistance, and for those who have carpets, I require pushing. Fortunately, Panda’s house is completely accessible.  But unfortunately it’s because she has muscular dystrophy and is also in a wheelchair.

It’s difficult for us to spend quality time alone together.  Both being disabled, if something falls on the floor…and is too heavy to pick up with our grabbers, we just call it “the vortex”, and pretend it doesn’t exist anymore. It dangerous for us to try to get around without the chairs, because if either falls, we can’t catch or help the other back up.  I remember one time watching her fall down while walking down a ramp.  We were leaving a bar that we’d shooting our on mini-documentary about DUI charged given to intoxicated people in power-chairs. Since we had my boyfriend Jesse and her guy friend from Shoprite there with us to assist, we had gone in without walkers or wheelchairs.  Jesse was helping me down into the parking lot, but her friend had taken off with a girl he’d just met at the bar and was trying to pick up.  The ramp didn’t look that steep, so she figured she could manage it on her own.  At the bottom of the ramp I turned around just in time to see her red licorice rope figure flop.  She tumbled; she flew back, and her head cracked hard against a metal railing.  I was within running reach of her.  But I couldn’t run, nor could I reach.  If only I could have caught her with the wrenching motion of my heart. I just lowered myself on the rail and sat on the ground beside her and tried to smile and look brave.  I didn’t know if she was seriously injured, it looked like it could have been serious.  Her smiling back did not reassure me; she could still smile even if she was shot in the back.  I asked her questions to test for a concussion; thankfully she was all right.  I then did all I could for her; I found her friend, and I screamed at him until he understood that if my hands had the strength he would have been strangled.

Panda and I never watch movies together.  It isn’t because we don’t like movies, we just like our time to be spent doing things; not observing them. We can talk marathons.  I never run out of things to say, because even on old subjects, we’re constantly having different perspectives and opinions. That is the definition of aging; and I am proud to be growing “old” with her.  Our conditions themselves are not fatal, but they are progressive. We’ll be there for each other at every level.  She’s one of the only people I can visit when I’m dizzy and in too much pain to stand, because I don’t feel weird spending the entire time laying in bed next to her talk-traveling our way around the world.

Yesterday we talked a lot about tomorrows.  Where we want to go; how we’re gonna get there.  She has a great girlfriend now, who not so coincidentally is one of my closest friends from highschool. She finally approves of Jesse, because he’s finally showing his understanding of my disability, and responsibilities as the man in my life.  At my room in Moss rehab Center, she came in to visit me while he was there too.  It turned into a sit down “couples counseling”, where the counselor did most of the talking.  Panda told him right there that if he’s going to live with me there’s things he needs to understand and be patient with.  She was referring to my emotions more than my physical needs.  Panda knows that that’s the support that counts most, and since she can’t be around me 24/7, that there needs to be someone else who can handle the job too.  I call her “Panda”, because I drunkenly discovered way back in our college days how well that rhymed with Amanda.