I’ve made it seven weeks now.

I’m bruised.  I’m broken.  This time, though, it wasn’t at the hands of my mother; it was caused by the hard cement of the sidewalk I fell into Wednesday morning.  I refuse to let another person ever break me like that again.  The sidewalk and I will need to have a discussion, too, because this can’t happen again.

Despite my fractured foot, I’ve been going to work.  I wake up 40 minutes earlier  because it takes me 40 minutes to walk to the bus stop.  I leave my house in the night and end up getting to the bus stop at dawn.  But it’s what I have to do.  Broken bones don’t pay the bills.  I leave my crutches in the break room at work and shuffle around and get my job done – a little slower, for sure, but the work still gets done.  I can’t not work.  I don’t have time to be disabled.  I’m exhausted by the end of the day, but maybe that’s a good thing.  That means there’s less energy available to screw other shit up.  Most nights, I just want to lay in bed and cry; but that doesn’t make the pain go away.  It just gives me horrible cry face.

I got my first paycheck today.  It wasn’t much, but it just feels a little better getting some sort of income in.  I still need another job or two.  Or a rich a husband.  I’m okay with either scenario.

I’ve been socializing so much more than what is normal for me.  It’s still difficult for me.  I still find myself struggling to respond.  But I am trying.  For some reason, people are naturally drawn to me.  That is the worst for someone who is socially anxious.  It’s a process.  It is also difficult for me to understand why someone would want to like me enough to talk to me (I know, a lot of childhood brainwashing there).  It’s something I’m slowly overcoming.  The other day, I exchanged jokes with a bus driver, which turned into a short, but polite conversation.  Yesterday, I engaged in a conversation over broken bones with an older gentleman who had more metal in him than bone.  And today, another bus driver and I talked about which place had the best cappuccino.  I still let the other side do most of the talking, but for me, it’s progress.  I’m doing a lot better considering where I was before.  It’s almost as if the simple lack of my mother’s presence has been enough to lift some of the fears and anxieties I had in speaking with other people.

On another good note, I finally received feedback for my thesis.  My grade: 99.  I have been obsessively checking all week, as if I were afraid I was going to fail the paper.  I didn’t expect to get a 99.  One grammatical error.  One point away from perfection.  In a way, it relates so much to my life.  As much as I strive to be perfect, my life will never be perfect.  But if I work hard enough, it can be damn near close enough to perfect.