Sticks, Stones, Broken Bones: One Year On

Exactly one year ago, my whole future changed. In this exact minute one year ago, at 4.30pm on the 25th August 2018, I was lying on the road with my elbow hanging out of my arm, unable to breathe, waiting half an hour for an ambulance, in too much pain to think about how scared I was.

I had just finished a day at my dive centre. I had signed off the final requirements of my Divemaster course, I was officially going to enter the dive industry as a professional. I didn’t know where exactly I was going to go after receiving my license, but I was thinking of taking the rest of my savings and heading to Honduras to complete my course as an instructor and begin a new life travelling and diving wherever the wind took me.

That all changed that day on the way back to my apartment to celebrate. I didn’t see a pole on the road and crashed heavily, landing on my side and exposing my elbow and crushing 5 ribs. The next week was a nightmare that all first-world country travellers only imagine and hope doesn’t happen to them. I won’t go into the details as I’ve written them here in this post.

Over the next months, instead of spending the rest of my days in Mexico diving, then shipping off to another tropical location to dive my way to happiness, I spent them laying in agony in a windowless apartment, watching my savings and my dream dwindling away.

That’s why as this day approached, a year later, it was so important for me to write about where I am today.

I write to you from a rooftop pool in Playa del Carmen with a man by my side with whom I never would be if it weren’t for that accident revealing to me what he was worth as a person, a friend and a partner.  I’m on holiday in the town that set me on a path, then robbed me of that dream. Yesterday I swam in the crystal turquoise Caribbean with 10-metre long whale sharks: an activity that I had planned and reserved for the weekend of my accident last year. I finally accomplished that dream. An average sighting during the season is about 20-30 whale sharks. We saw over 100. It was as though the universe was compensating me for being patient, waiting and never giving up on my dream to see them.

All the good people I met continue on and the bad energies have met their karma and moved on to other places. I’m facing some old bad memories with the sun on my skin and a smile on my face. I have a new scar on my elbow, a few more kilos from the lack of exercise and my tan has all but disappeared, but coming back here has been my way of not letting my past and things that happen to me take away my power; my power to enjoy life, face the harsh circumstances, smile, find an alternative, let it go and move on. I felt a lot of emotions during my accident, my hospitalisation and my recovery process, but never ever for a single second did I feel alone because of my partner and the support back home of my friends. I can’t say that I have much more of a plan for what I really want to do now, but I just know I want to smile and make others do the same.

This 1-year anniversary post is an example of how much your life can change within a year. Someone once said to me: “If your life is going well, it will not stay that way. If your life is going badly, it won’t stay that way either. Everything changes.” Never ever limit your future to what you can think about today. The best you can hope to do is reward yourself with a smile for being the amazing, different, special person you are and look forward to waking up tomorrow, because you never, EVER know what it will bring.