​ My nurse aid started doing my hair with moisturizer. She doesn’t like my hair to be always dry. It’s because I only take a shower once a week (it’s the only day I can squeeze in a shower between my exercises), and it’s on that day when she helps me wash my hair and put moisturizer on it. She asked me if I went to the hairdresser before the injury, and I said I didn’t; I used to moisturize my hair instead. I could stand up with both feet and had the use of both arms and hands, so I took a shower and washed my hair every day, and moisturized it every other day. Recently, I saw a picture of myself that was taken in January 2018 (two months before my injury) for an interview with Alison Rooney, a journalist at The Highland Current. My hair is long and very curly, and it looks thick.
I’ve written a lot about my yearning for the pre-injury past, and about the negative effects of clinging on to the time when I could do everything. Doing so prevents me from looking ahead with optimism, and I lose the staying power to keep doing my exercises. If I don’t do them steadily, I won’t recover my ability to move, and thereby my autonomy. But I still look back with longing. The past insists on stealthily getting into my mind when there’s any element that sets off an association. And these days any element has this kind of power: these are days of nostalgia. Maybe it’s tiredness; maybe it’s frustration; maybe it’s impatience. No matter how long I spend doing rehab exercises, progress is very slow. Or, my definition of progress. Perhaps it’s the high bar I set for myself: It’s so high that I can’t reach it.
Maybe I have to scale down the Kepra faster. Maybe I have to rest more, or meditate more frequently. Or, maybe I should turn the clock hands quickly. That way, I would age faster, but I would leave my disabilities behind –  I’d be able to stand and walk and move my arm and hand. I know it’s an unreasonable expectation. I know that setting an unfulfillable goal is doomed to frustration and impatience. So, there’s only two options left: Eric’s three Ps, and shutting every crack in my mind so that the past won’t be able to get in.

​We were chatting on a video-call with an old friend, and he asked me how my rehab exercises were going. I told him that I had to repeat each exercise many times and do the same exercises over and over; and that doing the exercises day after day was yielding little progress. My friend told me that my description reminded him of the conversations he used to have with another friend. At that time, his friend’s daughter was attending ballet classes at a prestigious school. Ballet requires dozens of repetitions of each step many times a day, just like rehab. His friend found his daughter’s training monotonous. I thought of the actual drive his daughter had to have in order to be a ballet dancer, and of the perseverance she needed to repeat the same movements many days a week. And then I thought about the perseverance I needed to be able to walk and use my arms again. I thought of the boredom and frustration I felt, caused by the constant repetition that only got me a little forward (friends and acquaintances’ admiration notwithstanding).
When I was seventeen, I decided I wanted to study ballet. I started taking classes, but I was easily bored. I didn’t last very long. Yet we always hear stories about famous dancers: how they got to their current position thanks to their indomitable passion. They dreamed of being a dancer and worked hard to make their dream come true. Every repetition was a step toward their goal, so they never tired of repeating.
I long for recovering my lost skills. That’s why I have to repeat my exercises, and repeat them again and again. And despite my boredom and frustration, I have to keep repeating them, just like ballet dancers. Maybe, like those who reach the top, I’ll make my dream come true. Maybe, if I dig deep down under the negative feelings, I’ll be able to find the drive to persevere, and progress will increase. 

​It was early in the morning. I was taking my meds, and Eric was standing next to me. (Now I’m grabbing the spoon and eating the yogurt with my meds, like a grown baby.) I thought of the day that was awaiting me: having (an awful) breakfast, then doing speech and leg exercises; walking; doing arm exercises; stretching; having (a passable and more-than-enough) lunch; reading, writing, and translating (a bit of pleasure to cut the boredom); having dinner; and taking my meds and cleaning myself, with Eric’s help. And then, the next morning would come, and I would have to start all over again. So, I asked Eric how he did this every morning. “I wake up,” he answered. His tone said everything.
            I thought how he had to go take every step and repeat it over and over, just like me. And I thought how tired and sick of it he must be, just like me: getting up; taking Nathan to school; making my meds and bringing them to me so that I could take them; going (virtually) to work; going shopping to the grocery store and the drug store; cooking things so that I could have lunch the next morning; working again; making dinner when he finished work; after we had dinner with Nathan, making my meds; and helping me clean myself. Then, the next morning would come, and he would have to do things all over again. And the same things would happen on weekends, sans work.
So, I decided that I would suggest to him that in order to avoid feeling worn-out and frustrated, we should help each other. We should think together and remind each other of the same things he’d suggested years ago, and repeated them when dreariness overwhelmed me. Every day one of us showed tiredness; every day one of us felt like quitting; every day routine seemed to get the best out of us, we should mention the three Ps: be patient, be positive, and push. He shouldn’t hide his feelings from me out of a need to protect me. We should take this journey together and pick each other up when we fell.