Broken-Mended

My name is Amanda Redhawk, this portion of my diary was written when I was forty-one years of age. I used to be an effective, energetic person. I have had this problem with my knee since I was thirteen years of age. I have had sixteen surgeries on my knee to date and I was in bed from basically June 7, 1998, until April 1999. For the first time in my life, I had both feet nailed to the floor. I was left to the mercy of others for my most basic of needs. The pain that encompassed my body is unexplainable in any words I know. When I was little, I really didn’t have any dreams, lots of survival thoughts, but no real dreams. I had inclinations of wanting to do or be certain things, but I thought there was no way I could ever obtain any of that. Being a little girl, loving to color and paint and lots of other artistic types of stuff, and being rather poor, I had to use what I could to fulfill this desire. So, when mom asked me to color her hair one-day when I was around five or six, I had found my niche. No one ever would’ve imagined that by the time I was sixteen I would be cutting all the neighborhoods children hair, my brothers and sister’s hair and let’s not forget about that incident with the family poodle when I colored his white hair to pink…using Kool-Aid and Clorox bleach!!! Grandma used to take me to the local beauty school to have my hair done and I remember how cool I thought it would be to do that for a living. But again, I just knew there was no way little old me could actually do or be anything I really wanted to be. I had learned at a very young age that I was not to have dreams, wants or desires. My job was to please others and do only as they would have me do. My wants? My dreams? They simply didn’t matter. So doing hair would be a sideline, a hobby of sorts, but never a reality… As per usual, I fell into a career I never intended to have which was accounting. It paid the bills, but it was not my passion. Hell, I don’t think I ever knew what passion was for the most part of my life. Funny, I had been living my life up until my knee blew out as an observer, never allowing anyone behind my iron-clad walls surrounding my heart and soul and certainly never allowing my heart and soul to trust or truly love another human being. When my knee blew out for that final time. I became a true observer. Confined to my bed the only view I had of life was through my bedroom window. I lived in one of the nicest apartment complexes in my town. The rent was higher than most, but I could afford it. I wanted a safe place for my daughter, Annie, and when choosing it, as well, I wanted the best schools the area had to offer. All were available at this complex. I chose an upstairs end unit with two bedrooms, and we had about nine hundred square feet of living space. The balcony overlooked the pool and all the amenities our complex had to offer. Incredible palm trees, eucalyptus trees and even pine trees and fir trees which reminded of living the in the Great White North! Birds could be heard singing and chirping from the break of dawn until the wee hours of the night. Summertime was wonderful as I would open my bedroom window and not only could I observe from my aerie people living life, playing in the pool, having parties in the clubhouse and even catching the regular games of tennis, but I could hear all this life happening just below me as well. At night I could observe couples sneaking into the jacuzzi after hours for their quiet and private time alone. Birthday parties in the clubhouse, seeing the hired clowns making cute balloon animals for children, pool parties, loud music that disturbed my senses from the teenagers and birds flying freely on a regular basis. Wintertime was a little tougher to bear. Too cold to open my window and no fresh air to calm my mood, total entrapment. A husband that didn’t want to be there, a precious little girl that was so sick of her mommy lying in bed she created lies to escape. Who can blame her? I would’ve done anything to escape my room. I even wore out my mattress in the ten months I laid in that bed. It wasn’t the best to start with, but being there twenty-four hours a day for seven days a week was just more than my mattress could take. From inside my room, at night I could hear my husband, Daniel playing his guitar in the living room, when he thought I was asleep. I could hear the TV and I could hear Daniel preparing meals. I could see my bathroom, yet it was not the bathroom I could use. I had to use the other one, as it had a bathtub, which was my source of cleanliness as well as a place to put my leg when I had to “go.” I could hear Heather and Summer who lived in the apartment underneath me partying. I could hear my sissy, Summer, singing and I could hear them fighting. I could hear my daughter Annie, going down there to escape the confines of her mom laying in bed and I could hear Daniel as well, going down there to life, rather than the non-life happening just one floor up.