Yesterday, walking, I slipped on the ice and fell down. Hard. Faceplant on the icey sidewalk which had recently been dusted with a thin layer of fresh snow.
No excuses… it was just bad luck and poor coordination. Always, such things are embarrassing, but more so, in Korea as foreigner, where people already stare at you simply for existing. A woman was very concerned, and it was odd, once I'd done the basic inventory to make sure that I was in one piece, but I found myself feeling pleased that I was communicating (not well, but communicating) that I was fine in Korean: 괜찮아요, 네, 괜찮아요.
I had a bit of a scrape to my face, but it wasn't bad … mostly a blow to the ego. My wrist hurt, because of how I'd fallen, but it didn't seem bad. A scrape on the hand, more than on the face but not so publicly visible, so less annoying.
It wasn't until I got back to my little room in the guesthouse that my wrist really started hurting. I began to worry I'd fractured something. I held it out, next to the other hand, and looked for swelling. I carefully felt each part, to identify where the pain was, and decided it was the tendons on the back of wrist that had gotten damaged. But the pain was pretty bad. I took some ibuprofin, and lay in my bed in the dark contemplating buying a couple bottles of soju and drinking them to pass out.
I thought, if it's like this tomorrow, I'll have to got to a hospital. And my life, right then, felt very fragile. All the contentment, all the comfort with just being out waiting for whatever's next, all that was missing. I just felt awful.
But in the morning, my wrist felt better, though not perfect. That confirmed that I hadn't broken anything… especially when I found I could type fine, again.
[this is a "back-post" written 2010-01-16]