As a non-Vietnamese speaker living in Vietnam, there are a lot of activities that I cannot participate in but there are also plenty that I can. You do kind of have to go out of your way to find them though and being in the expat community that consists of languages from all around the world means that even though there is a group of foreigners doing something somewhere, you may not always fit in because it might be French or Russian or even Spanish language oriented.
When I was healthy and could move all of my body this seemed like a hindrance to truly getting involved in many of the activities but once I injured myself and I was all of a sudden incapable of doing almost anything, it really opened my eyes to how incredibly mundane life without the ability to move can be.
when you are wearing a shoulder brace, and sitting in anything other than cushioned chairs of a specific type, results in my broken ribs starting to bother me rather rapidly.
in that regard, even though the broken ribs do not limit my ability to walk nearly as much as the cast on my leg did when I broke my ankle, it does make it quite impossible for me to enjoy anything outside of my house.
But what do you do once you no longer want to do any of the things in your house anymore?
I just end up sitting somewhere and looking at memes or other stupid shit on the internet and the next thing I know it is time to take some pills again.
This is not a "feel sorry for me" post. I'm not fishing for sympathy. What this is for me and perhaps for other people is a wake up call to be thankful for the things that we all take for granted. I never really thought about what it would be like to not be able to walk down to the beach, not to be able to ride a bicycle, not to be able to go for a swim, not to be able to do so much as go to a restaurant that is too far away from home and has unknown chairs in it.
I think that once I have recovered, which I hope will be at least well enough at some point in the next 10 days that I can do stuff, that I will have a renewed appreciation for simply being able to go places and just BE THERE.
Nadi has helped me a lot in this period and it also made me think about how much worse this time would have been if she was not here. Once I am healed I am going to make even more of an effort to get out and do stuff and avoid being at home all the time just doing nothing. I've had NO CHOICE but to be at home doing nothing for the past 20 days and it is driving me nuts.