Art

That breath of fresh air and that tingling sensation that stings your nose and fills your lungs. Their whisper of thank for that clean air.

A warm cup of tea, just sweet but with the bitter tang and the thick sensation of cream. Your chilly fingers wrapped around the mug and that tickle of heat.

The rush of watching a river, it's roar and utter power as it flows.

All of the above are powerful sensations that I remember and live with every day. Add them all up, and you have almost what drawing does for me. It's beyond a passion and is possibly an obsession. You don't STOP seeing art when you live it out. You breathe art in, you touch and taste it. Even if it's just with the touch of your fingertips.

It's inexplicable and undeniable, there is no greater love that God and his art or the art he has given me the gift to create.

Dusting

I'm going to dust off this old blog and start posting in it again. Simply for the fact that I need SOMEONE to rant to on a daily basis and I think your eyes will do just fine.

Fancy that, I've just sat here staring at this semi blank page for five minutes, I guess I've got nothing new to write about |D I need like...an FAQ even though the only questions I get asked frequently are, "How are you" and "Can you unload the dishwasher". Yes I think I'm capable of picking up dishes and putting them on shelves for the time being.

Until further adieu and the times my brain cooperates,

Spicy Twist,
Mad.

A Fight I Will Win

When I mention I had surgery I get asked the same questions a lot, “Oh no! What happened?” or “What did you need surgery on?” I do get tired of answering them with the same, quick answers, so I thought I’d write it all out.

It started with a soccer game in eighth grade. We’d beat almost every team with an average score of 5-0. I normally played defense but had the occasional game in some other position. The only position I didn’t get played was a forward. Well, during our semi-finals against a team from Lord Byng (a school) I was finally put as forward. There were five minutes left in the game and it was the second one we were losing, we’d lost to them before in another match earlier. I had my foot planted to make a shot at the goal when this girl, must have been twice my size, decides to come at me from the right and knock into me in an attempt to get the ball. The next bit was fast and I think I black out a moment because first there were two cracks and I remember thinking, “Yeah that’s not good”, and then I was on the ground. I thought I was screaming, not because it hurt but because I was scared. This pain had only happened once before and it was when I sprained my wrist. Somehow you know when something is just sprained and not broken. Well, they got me off the field and let me hop to a car to get my mom and drive off to the hospital. We’re in the car not 1 minute and the pain hits. I’m screaming and bawling my eyes out, trying to support my knee as best I can because of my goodness it hurt. It took us almost an hour to get to UBC hospital although for me it felt like five minutes. I’d calmed down a bit enough to ask how long it’d, turns out being in shock alters your sense of time. We got to the hospital and I was smiling. Still crying mind you, but smiling. Jokes were exchanged and I got some x-rays done. All the doctors did was wrapping it in a tensor bandage and tell my mom, “Ice it and rest it, she should be fine.” They’d tell me that for the next three years.

Eventually my knee got a little stronger, not much but I was able to participate in physical education. My ninth grade teacher was sweet about the little I was able to do without hurting my knee; I had didn’t have the luck of having her for tenth grade.

In August, just before school started, I tried out for a Silver A soccer team at a friend’s request. As it turns out I was, not to brag but being honest by my coach’s opinion, one of the better players on the team and held more skill and potential than most of the girls. We didn’t win many games but we didn’t get scored on very often, I played defense as per usual. During one of our rainier games I took a fall and my knee cracked twice again. I think it made me more sad than pained. I gave up my number and Jersey and resigned to spending my days on couches and in beds, entertaining the internet world with my “punkyness”.

In tenth grade I had a bit of a relentless teacher. She didn’t believe that my knee was in a constant pain and made me do the same, horridly strenuous exercises that every other girl did. Some examples; six laps around our 600 meter track, hopping on one leg for 30 seconds, and pressing your back to the wall using your knees to hold you up. I did them without complaining too much and paid the price later. I did get a doctor’s note excusing me from participated for a month, but I was back in that gym directly after.

In eleventh grade I enrolled for physical education again, mainly because I wouldn’t have the same teacher but as well because the class was more relaxed and I would be allowed to sit out from certain activities if needed. In December I got taken to a physiotherapist and she let me know that I’d damaged just about everything in my knee. She also told me to spit on my P.E. teacher; I liked her from that moment. We continued physiotherapy for the next month or so but got no results, and at $70 per session, we didn’t think it advantageous to continue. I again resigned myself to little activity and the internet, the only thing that made me happier on a regular basis was my tablet and the art I was beginning to create with it.

Twelfth grade rolled around. By this time I’d gotten fed up enough that my mother agreed to start making arrangements for a surgery. My only complaint until things got going was that my knee would constantly give out while I was walking or it would give me trouble one day and be fine the next. We saw a doctor who gave us a referral for an MRI and shortly after we got a date. December 16^th. Shortly after we met my surgeon, he let me know that several things were wrong with my knee. 1) My ACL was definitely lax and irregular; it would need to be repaired. 2) I had two tears in the cartilage of my knee; the reason it would give out on me constantly had something to do with the MCL catching on the tear. There were other things but I can’t find the sheet the results were printed on. A little after that, I got a surgery date. It made me nervous and absolutely excited; my knee was on its way to recovery. The date did get switched sooner, it was a pleasant surprise but it also just made me stress more. I was told to exercise my knee because the stronger it was going in, the stronger it would be in the end. I kind of regret postponing that now.

Day of the surgery I got woken at 6 am, silly mom. We were early by half an hour and even then apparently early by an hour. I had to put on one of those gowns and I felt so exposed then, my goodness, the IV. I think I died and came back to life again. If you know me you'll know I hate needles, despite it being a plastic tube (mom named it Toby tubey, said he was my friend.) it's the same idea, something foreign in my body. That was the scariest part. The waiting did suck, wasn't long thankfully. By 10 I was out cold, which I think was amazingly WEIRD to have fallen asleep like that. I woke up some time later; they said the surgery was 90 minutes. But when I did wake up man I was panicking. The nurse had to hold my head still because I would stop shaking it and screaming. You try going to sleep and waking up in another feeling like someone chopped off your legs and was going at it with a hammer. (Still have that feeling now.) Then when I was half awake and feeling better they wheeled me out to this I-Don't-Think-I-Like-You lady. It was okay; she succumbed to my sassy adolescent charm and was smiling in no time. At about 3:30 I was on my way out and discovering just how much pain my knee was in. Car ride home was fine despite they said I would puke. I felt like a dog all the way home because as a precaution I stuck my head out the window, cold air helps keep the nausea away. I’ve been bedridden since I got home. I've been given two of the prescribed painkillers and like my dad, I'm allergic to both. We've resorted to a combination of Tylenol 500 and Advil 400.

It’s now Tuesday, February 21^st, and I only learned that yesterday I could walk. Five days after surgery and I was walking. I think I will definitely make an amazingly fast recovery and be back to playing soccer again. I have a passion for the game and have worked too hard to give it up now just because it will require more physiotherapy and a lot of determination. Work for what you love, you feel like a hero in the end.