I took an arrow to the knee...

I broke my knee from running too much. It happened about three weeks ago while I was far out of town running for an hour and a half when something inside my right knee snapped after I landed on my right foot, there was a sudden jolt of pain that almost made me fall to the ground screaming like a girl. I managed to stay on both feet though but it still hurted like hell that I had to walk limping for a while, I thought it must have been a nerve or a blood vessel caught inside the hinge of my knee that the pain would just go away just like cramps after a little amateur massage on the side of the road and a short walk.

The pain struck my knee twice that morning but I didn't gave a crap about it, all I had on my mind was to finish the whole 18 kilometer route or to just do it no matter what, like how nike advertisements would quote people to motivate on exercise, though I didn't had one nike item on me even just socks so that I could go blame them afterwards.

My knee continued to have this tingling sensation somewhere in the middle of the joint the days after, it wasn't as painful when it snapped but people can tell from the way I was walking funny. I still wanted to jog anyway but the goddam weather was depressing thereon gushing out a lot of rain for the next two weeks, stopping once in a while but not long enough for me to go jog after work. So I decided to try the stationary bike over at my gym since it was the closest thing to running and sweating on dry land. I took one bike that looked like a space hovercraft with worn out buttons on its little cockpit panel, I pressed them like a monkey on a keyboard and when nothing blew up I pedaled myself into my own imaginary highway. The sequence I pressed the buttons at random though, set the bike into its own imaginary mountain route that made the pedals more stiffer to kick on as if you were cycling up a slope every once in a while. With my knee already in a bad shape, I still kicked on the thing even when the pedal felt like a brickload.

It finally stopped raining on that same weekend and I ran out into the countryside again covering my 18 kilometer route and I was able to finish it without my knee snapping or anything, except for the tingling sensation, it didn't bother much and I still got myself to run like hell when I would start thinking about how I used to smoke before, getting sick with cancer, dying and stuff like that.

What I noticed when I ran back at my route is that there had been a growing number of other people running in it, I liked it in a way because it makes the whole road much safer from these crazy dogs with hangovers that go running after people first thing in the morning, now they'd have a lot of other running people to bite other than me. But with more people running on the road on my route I was afraid that somebody running along my pace would start a goddam phony conversation with me, and it did happen this time. I didn't even know how she started it but I ended up listening to crap from this running lady I caught up in front of me with who was as old as my mother, she was a living airbag on a pair of new running shoes. I had to know she had new shoes because she bragged about it first, and it was sure a goddam brag since you don't start a conversation to strangers about wearing new shoes that morning, I didn't look at them though. She was also running on my route and she continued about how she won races and all, well actually she said she won two races, and she could have won one last week if she joined and talked about joining another one next month perhaps with thoughts about winning still. I didn't want to be rude and made her go on talking until when she made quite a pause I told her to be seeing her around and made a run for it, she had to pause and catch her breath anyway. On my way out on ditching her I could have made a last laugh by yelling back that if she was that fast, how in the hell was I able to catch up with her in the first place, I didn't though, it was probably going to be bad karma on my knee.

Then came my grandmother's 90 birthday a week ago where we had a grand dinner and almost all of my cousins and their kids came to show my grandmother the headcount of her contribution to world population in her lifetime. Most of my cousins around me that night inclined their careers towards medicine or these sort of jobs around the hospital, and when we all got together on the dinner table and started asking me how was I doing, all I ever said was that my knee feels funny from running around the countryside. And when the medicine cousins started talking how bad a knee broken from too much exercise can get someday, I began to loose my appetite because of thoughts of how I can become a cripple when there's even so much great food to eat, I started to imagine that I would someday end up in a wheelchair like professor X even before I get to 50 if I don't get this knee fixed, and if I didn't end up on a wheelchair I would not be able to jog anymore for the rest of my life.

I went to manila a couple of days later, I bought a knee band that straps around my knee to keep everything there tight  for whatever broken tissues to grow back faster being closer to where it was ripped apart. My old man also gave me a bottle of knee medicine, I didn't read anything on the bottle but there was a picture of a knee in the label and it already spoke of everything I needed to know. My medicine cousins including peter also told me that I should restrain myself from all sorts of knee exercise the next six freaking months,  just as long for pregnant women not be running themselves before childbirth. I couldn't just go back to my routine during my 20's of drinking alcohol to kill time, but imer asked me for some beers tomorrow and it probably wouldn't hurt drinking for a night anyway, besides he's got a lot of stories to tell about how he proposed marriage to his girl and these things don't come even close to happening twice to anybody in a lifetime.

I miss running though.