Content note: discussion of injury! Nothing gory, nothing broken, no blood.
Bless my nephew’s baby heart—he is six and also an MCU fan, so when my sister spent the last week prepping him for how gnarly my face looks, he thought “Aunt [Cleo] has a black eye” meant I had LOST AN EYE, Thor-style. Honestly, anything would be pretty chill compared to that.
We have small family dinners where my sister’s crew comes over on Sundays, so he hadn’t seen me in a week. And I fell down the deck steps last Monday (a week ago today). In the middle of dinner, long after we had discussed all of this, he turns to me and cheerfully says, “You look terrible, [Cleo]. I love you.” He has multiple special needs, including very hyper ADHD, but he is also the sweetest little super-empathetic boy. “I hope you feel better soon,” he told me when I hugged him goodbye.
I still look like roadkill. Most of the swelling on my face has gone down, but my cheekbone is a hard lumpy knot to the touch. My cheek is chartreuse; there’s some mulberry bruising around my eye—
—and most of the bruising, in the weird way of bruising, “drained” all the way down to my jaw. I didn’t do shit to my jaw but it looks the most horrible. Just, like, indigo. Still got a cut over my lip. And yet, I’d still sally out to LensCrafters for new glasses, except that my cheek is too swollen to try on frames. So, another week of blurry squinting. Yay.
I will not detail how fucked up my left leg is. Just believe that it is. The right leg looks bad but it doesn’t hurt. My right arm is a little gnarly but it’s coming along well. Arnica gel has helped the bruising disperse, although you can also use diluted vinegar to break it up.
I didn’t hit my nose per se (hashtag blessed), but my sense of smell is, let’s say, compromised, between the dregs of a head cold and the bruising. So I HAVE new perfume samples, but I’m not sure any impressions of them would be accurate right now.
I was looking over my old Dracula tweet threads, but it’s a bit hard with the squinting. Significant amounts of reading are right out until I get new glasses, which may be this weekend.
Typing isn’t too bad (as you see), particularly on my phone, which I can peer more closely at. Bottom line, this fucking sucks, but we persevere.
