The Year After The Night Before

365 days ago on a dark and stormy night in a foreign land, I found myself forlorn and alone, stranded and wounded. Fearing for my life after a horrific accident that would change the rest of my life, seeing months squandered in a painstaking recovery both physically and psychologically...
 

Who am I kidding?!

It was a mild night in at the beginning of the summer, just as the temperature is maturing from spring and I had met up with accompanied a good friend from my Koh Rong days, Dennis, to one of his friends birthday parties.on the promise to myself of not showing him up, I vowed not to drink too much. But then my hand outstretched at the bar and a beer-too-many accidentally fell into my mouth, which later resulted in a slip of footing and a battle with the cobbled streets of Graz, Austria. Curb 1-0 Becca. After much conversation to and fro , everyone decided it'd be best for me to end my evening there and get an ambulance to hospital (much against my wishes... For both ending my night and going to hospital). Once safely strapped in, and with the blue lights flashing, Dennis and I proceeded to take some selfies in the ambulance, joke around with the doctors, then he joyrode a wheelchair whilst I got my diagnosis....a fracture tibia. 

"At least I haven't broken my leg!" I thought. Swiftly being corrected and learning that a fracture is a break. A fracture tibia means I broke my leg. The fun and games ended a few days later when I realized the difficulty showering, making myself a cuppa, the sheer drop that comes with missing a step on the stairs...and that I'd have to move back in with my Mum and Dad for the first time in years...but hey- if it's not a good time it's a good story. Right? And it certainly wasn't a night to forget...if only I could remember most of it.

 

   Needless to say it was a defining moment of my year at least on those (wonky) streets in Austria.

 

The next few months saw me return to La Case de Old Lady y Baldy, after an entertaining conversation with my Mum on the phone which said in a more explicit tone "You're ever so silly, Rebecca. I wonder what thought would've skipped through your mind for you to wonder so carefree around those streets. Your vision must've been clouded through the slight inebriation of one tickle of larger too many" which I did receive a heads up text from my Dad about saying;

"told her not to be to tough wiv u x"

I'm glad I got the heads up, I would've been more glad if my mother had listened that advice. 

 

My active lifestyle of snowboarding, via ferrata, hiking (does dancing on tables count as a sport?) was very quickly reduced to a daily climb up the stairs, a hobble to the toilet, and a hop to the kitchen once an hour. Entertainment I normally source from a social with friends, an excursion to grab a coffee, or a stroll around the outdoors was rapidly reduced to whatever I could find on Netflix, solitaire on my laptop, or the ever-dreadful-but-addictive SCROLL. Eventually I strained my eyes from watching screens all day (and I even convinced myself I had an eyefloater taking over the entirety of my left side vision and a brain tumor...thanks for that one google). It was just a temporary lifestyle change for me, luckily. But it doesn't change how dramatic that shift was.

 

Eight weeks after that initial hangover, my cast was off and leg was free to face the world again. Now resembling a flakey, undercooked, and rolled-on-the-floor-and-covered-in-hair crossiant. 

 

Adulting

Adulting 
Verb
To carry out one or more of the duties and responsibilities expected of fully developed individuals 

Being the wholesome age of almost 24 I have been exposed to almost 6 years of being an (by English definition) “adult" Some might say 5 years because that’s when I (hopefully) permanently “flew the nest” well….jumped on an Emirates flight to Australia and began my life as a professional hobo and doing the equivalent of living in the park, drinking cheap booze and snatching up any opportunity for anything with the words “free” in front of.

Something that was been playing on my mind throughout my 12 hours of basically nonstop scootering around South East Asia was that wow, I have managed to live this long and wow, what a life so far I’ve lived. If I’m 'adulting', maybe I’m doing it really well…or maybe I’m doing it really wrong. Either way I’m happy with whatever side of the fence you stand on with that. 5 years 10 months and 18 days ago when I turned 18, finally after months of having to sneak into after parties for god-knows-what band across the country, I was blessed that I could legitimately do everything I had dreamed of as a child…eating icecream FOR BREAKFAST; staying up to watch 12A films when they were on past 9pm, drinking Sunny D in the living room (yeah mum, I’ve never forgotten when I spilt it on the floor in Broadfield and you went mental and banned it from the front room) and the list goes on. But one observation I’ve made is that your freedom as an adult is fully rebelling from everything adults told you to not do as a child. I’ve made a list of a few of those.

-          “Don’t play in traffic”

Right, so take a minute to open a new tab (but don’t close my blog) and youtube “Traffic in Ho Chi Minh” and you will see the chaos (written about on this blog here) that ensues. Looks catastrophic, right? But it works! And boy, is it fun to ride a scooter. So playing in traffic gets a big thumbs up and recommendation from me (but for the love of god, wear a helmet)

-“Don’t accept sweets from strangers”

Unless it’s some dodgy geezer in a grotty club asking if you’d met his friend Charlie, or Mandy maybe (maybe) they are some sweets you might think twice bout accepting. But from my travels the kindness that comes from people who have significantly less than you and even though you might not speak a word of the same language they will insist you share a beer with them and some of the sweetest fruits I’ve ever had have come from the hand of a stranger. Although drinks, I am still cautious of. So maybe a *small* word of wisdom there.

-“If XXXX jumped off a cliff, would you do the same?”

Naaa, of course not! Do you think I’m stupid? If bloody Tara from bloody Bath can free jump off an 8meter high cliff and frekkin’ Dave from Stoke On Trent can do 10meters- find me the biggest cliff you can I wouldn’t do the same I’d do better.

-“Don’t get in the car with strangers”

A free ride and a cracking conversation? Count me in! Whether it’s to save me the dreaded down-piest route from my ski season at 3am with a group of frenchies who obviously (and smartly) found their designated driver, or a £50 cab because apparently there’s no busses on a Sunday in the west coast of England (developed country, eh?). I’ve met people on my travels who have shared rides with pigs, goats, sidecars, trucks, and 1000 chickens.

Hitchhiking gets a big thumbs up from me!

-“Don’t talk to strangers”

Don’t make me laugh.

 “Don’t lick a knife”

Okay, maybe I’ve done this. Probably still recommended.