The Wasting

As a somewhat open minded, 20-something, there are few things that I would come right out and say that I hate. I have been trained through a liberal education to try to find the value of everything and to rationalize and see the world through other people's eyes. I am, however, becoming fairly good at listing the things that I hate to have in my own life. These things may work for other people, but I hate when I find myself doing them.

The thing I hate the most is wasted time. I define wasted time as time that is not used to either actively think or do something. Almost anything, really. It is for this reason that I hate television, board games, video games, and my current state of being. Right now I feel like I have wasted the better part of a summer, and now I am trapped in a state where I waste nearly all my time. Right now my only options are to lay on the couch and watch television or lay in bed and daydream. Activities that used to take seconds and no forethought whatsoever now take several minutes and a considerable amount of planning and engineering. Example: right now I am sitting on the couch in the living room, and I need to get my phone, a pillow, and a book that are in my room. Normally I could stand up, walk to my room, pick those three things up and come back in literally 5-10 seconds. Now, however, I have to slowly and painfully pick my leg up off the couch and put it on the ground, while I sit myself up on the couch. Then I have to pick my crutches up off the ground and lean them against the couch, put my hands back to the couch so I can push up to the point where I can stand, grab my crutches, and walk slowly to my room. The doctors told me to walk in a different way now, so for every step I have to swing my right leg backward, then swing it forward, plant the heel of my foot down slightly in front of me, and roll my weight forward to the ball of my foot. It takes several minutes for me to walk the short distance down the hallway to my room. Additionally, I will probably have to make several trips back and forth to my room, because I can carry only one thing at a time, not all three things at once.

What's worse is that the pain killers I am on make me sleepy and my thoughts fuzzy so I can't really carry on a sustained thought process. I can't write, nor read, nor carry on conversation, nor prepare myself for the upcoming school year. I lay around all day feeling like I either just woke up, or like I have been up for days and need to go to sleep. I think I am going to stop taking them soon, I can't stand this Rip Van Winkle-esque existence. The only thing pulling me through right now is the thought that I will never again have to waste this much time.