my leg got chopped open and more metal got shoved into it and then it got sewed up again and this is how i feel about that and other things

two weeks ago i had another surgery on my right leg from when i broke it back in september (fun fact: that is the second most read post ever on this blog).  here is a video of this surgery for the medically curious.  not pictured: the bone graft or the removal of five screws put in during the previous surgery, featured here.  don't watch that if you're eating or have a weak stomach.  my mom has been here taking care of me but she is leaving tomorrow.  fortunately my friend heather is coming for a week after my mom leaves.  then i will be on my own and i have already described all of my fears about that.

i have been laying around on my ass for two weeks although i did manage to go to radiohead on tuesday, and i have to give a shout out to the staff at riverbend for being totally amazing and bending over backwards for a neurotic anxiety ridden nut case in a wheelchair.

i have watched all of downton abbey and half of dead like me and a bunch of mad men and girls and the new girl and a bunch of movies that i can't really remember right now except walk the line and about a third of citizen kane and i have to say i do not get what is so great about that movie... boring.  one day i will write a story about the time i went to the hearst castle and it will be a lot more interesting than that movie, and the story is actually not even very interesting at all.

i have read some books and a lot of news and blogs and david sedaris and i have eaten very well.  i know that there are at least nine cats wandering around my street and i pretty much know their schedules and habits and who is friends with who and who hates who, at least among the cats.

here is what my ankle looked like yesterday

i was going to try to write a lot but it turns out that you have nothing to write about when you are not doing anything, and despite suggestions that i should try to write while drugged the percocet made my brain slow down so that i really had even less than nothing to write about and absolutely zero incentive to even try.

i have been spending a lot of time thinking about what the hell i am doing with my life and why and have not come up with a lot of good answers.  i'm feeling kind of done with this whole law thing, although i need to do it for another four years in order to get my loans paid off.  maybe i'm just feeling kind of done with my current job.  my office has been bleeding people for years, the best and smartest people are almost all gone and the majority of people left either probably could not function anywhere else or haven't been there long enough to realize they need to get the hell out or want to get the hell out but just haven't been able to yet.  office morale has been consistently falling to new all time lows for years.

i feel dangerously close to getting sucked into the abyss of terminal monotony that seems to engulf people who have been working in my office for too long.  you just handle the same cases over and over and over and they are all depressing and everyone's life is just as shitty at the end of the case as it was at the beginning of the case and the clients are all miserable and the opposing counsel are all assholes and you lose your ambition to actually be creative and dynamic as an attorney because you are buried in the mountain of the same old cases and problems that keep coming and keep coming and keep coming, especially now since there are way too few people to handle the work, and nobody feels appreciated and no one has the time or energy to push themselves professionally or intellectually and everyone is overworked and underpaid and all the people who you liked and respected and trusted, and who liked and respected and trusted you, are gone.

here is what my leg looked like a week ago

aside from work i feel dissatisfied too.  i have been in cincinnati for six years now, way longer than i ever thought i would stay, and while i do have some people here who are important to me, it just doesn't feel like enough.  i've done everything i can possibly think of to make this place feel like home (living in different neighborhoods with different roommates or alone, volunteering for a variety of different causes, joining a running group and a kickball league and a book club, starting and running cincinnati imports, blogging, taking classes in meditation and wine tasting and golf and japanese, and probably other things that i'm not thinking of right now) but none of it really has made it feel like home.

on top of that, i have had what i feel like is a record breaking number of people who were close friends here in cincinnati either move away or else turn out to be completely fucking bat shit crazy.  the few people i feel truly close to here are too busy with all the other things in their lives (spouses, children, family obligations, work, travel, their friends from high school, whatever) to be in my life as much as i need them to be.  most of my closest friends live in other cities and i look at their large fulfilling networks of smart, adventurous, socially conscious friends who they spend time with almost every day of the week without clinginess or cliqueyness or codependency and i feel depressed that i have been living without that for six years now and what the hell am i doing with my life?

being in varying states of immobility for the past nine months has put me in a position where i have been pretty much locked into place physically.  you can't just up and move when you can't even walk, and you can't really seriously try to get a new job when you are going to have to tell a potential future employer that you are going to be needing them to give you a few weeks off for major surgery right after you start, assuming you can even get them to hire you in the first place.

more surprising than the physical effects is how introverted i have become since september, when i first broke my leg.  i just no longer feel like i want to be around very many people, and in fact can hardly stand to be around more than a couple of people at a time.  i had a party at the beginning of april that made me want to swear off hosting parties forever, and at a cincinnati imports event at the end of april i did nothing but sit in the corner and check my watch.  i just don't like very many people that much anymore, and i especially don't like them in groups.  i feel like so many people are silly and ridiculous and superficial and self absorbed and while i always used to try to find out what was interesting in people, now i just want them to leave me alone.  it's hard for me, and others, to understand and accept since for many years i was one of the most social people in any group.

it would be easy to say that this is depression and maybe it is.  i never think i am depressed when i am, and it is never clear to me that that was my problem until much later on, when i am happy again, and i am like "shit, i was depressed."  but i don't feel sad about not wanting to be around people... i just feel relieved.  i still feel lonely though which is the problem and why i am writing about it.  but one thing i am sure of at this point, which i think i never really realized before, is that knowing a lot of people, or meeting a bunch of new people, does not do anything to relieve loneliness.  the key is to know people (even just a few) who for whatever reason make you feel not lonely, and to be able to spend as much time as you want with those people.  and i do not have that particular combination of factors in my life right now.

what i need is to be able to spend my work time doing something that allows me to feel autonomous and creative and challenged and valued and my free time with a group of people with whom i feel a close bond and shared common values.  these things are both missing from my life.  it's the same tune i have been singing since i moved to cincinnati really, and it's depressing to realize that maybe nothing has changed and maybe this just isn't the place for me and never will be no matter how hard i try.  maybe i have given cincinnati my all and it's time to move on... once i can actually move again.