Sliding Doors
Thursday, July 6, 2023
Little moments can drastically change the course of our lives.
Have you ever seen the movie sliding doors? The movie with Gwyneth Paltrow, where there is a moment at the beginning of the movie when her future splits in two just by the chance of missing the sliding doors of the metro. Just that one, seemingly insignificant moment, completely changes the direction of her life. I think about that movie often. How one small and innocuous moment in life, can completely change your future.
This last month and a half, has been complete shit. In all honesty, my life has been a series of severe ebbs and flows for the last year and a half. And I tried to think what was the exact moment where it seemed like my luck took a nose dive. and I’m pretty sure that I figured it out… it was on our last day in Paris when I sprained my ankle.
We had just finished our boat tour on the river Seine and were walking by the Eiffel Tower for the last time on our way to catch the metro to go back to the hotel to get our bags and head to the airport to fly home. As we were walking, I tripped. I didn’t trip on the vendors, selling the Eiffel Tower trinkets. I didn’t trip on the crowd of people. I didn’t trip on a crack in the sidewalk. No, I tripped on absolutely nothing. When I rolled my ankle, it hurt so bad that I wasn’t sure I was gonna be able to walk. But, being the person that I am, and having the anxiety I do when it comes to being on time, especially with airports, I powered through it and limped my way to the metro. Then, adding insult to injury (literally), I rolled my ankle two more times on the way to the airport. It hurt so bad but I continued to power through it as we made it through the millions of checkpoints it took just to get on the plane. On a side note: I am not a huge fan of the Orly airport, and I swear I had to show my passport to 20 different people before we even got to our gate and again in order to get onto the plane. It was so easy to get into France but it was a pain in the ass to get back into the US.
Throughout the 11 hour flight back home, my ankle began to hurt more and more and I wound up taking my shoe off. There wasn’t really much I could do because the flight was full. I had my daughter beside me at the window, and a very large man seated on the other side of me by the aisle. I didn’t really have any wiggle room. When we landed in the US, my ankle was severely swollen. I couldn’t get my shoe back on and I had to wear my daughter’s slides. I was the last one off the plane, for the sheer reason that it took me that long to hobble off. When we finally got to a point where they had those little baggage carts, I got one. Not for the baggage, but to use as a walker. It was so bad and so obvious that Customs kind of felt bad and let me go through ahead of everybody else in line. And the worst part, it was my right foot, meaning I had to drive the 2 1/2 hours home from the San Francisco airport using that swollen foot.
When I finally made it to the doctor a day later, he lectured me, saying that I should never have gotten on that plane. He told me that I was in severe danger of a blood clot from flying at such a high elevation for that long. I always joke that it was the universe‘s way of telling me to not leave France. I really should’ve listened. It felt like as soon as we landed in the US, my luck and my life took a nose dive. Everything that could go wrong did. Just a few weeks later, I turned 40. For a while I have thought that it was turning 40 that really affected my luck in my life. But if I really think about it, it was that moment in France. What if I had gone to the hospital like I knew I should have? What if we were delayed in coming back? What if I had really decided not to leave?
It’s those little sliding doors moments, and I’m starting to wonder if I made a grave mistake.