This past month, it's all been about recovery and change, which is kind of what I was looking to happen in this blog, but in a more subtle way over a longer period of time. The fact that so much has happened so quickly, as a result of the car accident, is a little overwhelming.
My body is largely back to normal. The scars are still pinkish and not quite fully healed, but I've gotten used to them, and the feeling like having masking tape across my back is no longer as annoying. Maybe in time I will stop noticing it at all. I've got a consult with a plastic surgeon next month to see if there's anything for it, but I'm thinking he will be more interested in the superficial appearance and less in the tactile nuisance.
I've also got a new car (new-to-me, anyway) out of the deal, and have moved from my apartment into one of the houses in my neighborhood. The phrase "my neighborhood" is something a lot of people toss about, "my neighborhood" is the neighborhood in which they happen to live. In this instance, "my neighborhood" is a housing subdivision I created from an empty field - though that's a bit egocentric to imply that it was my own effort, as all I have done is coordinated the activities of others and taken on the financial risk. Still, it's kind of cool to think that, but for me, this would still be an empty field.
But back to the "new house" thing, I'm nesting at time-lapse speed, with things being delivered and unpacked and set up and put away, doing over the course of a month the same thing that most people probably take several years to accomplish: furnishing every room, buying all the little bits and pieces, etc.
And all of this is strange to me. Even before the house burned down and I went totally Spartan for a couple of years, I was never much for nesting: lived in a cheap place, bought what I needed as I came to need it (or replaced what was worn out), and didn't consider my home as anything but cold storage. So all of the hubbub now is focused on things that I figured "other people" did, but that I never would.
Much of this seems like an epilogue to me - one of those rare times in life when you come to realize that the future is going to be significantly different than the past. But at the same time, that seems a bit facile and superficial. All that's changed are the material things, and those are the things that matter the least.
I'm still estranged from my family, no prospects for a relationship, and still hanging out with the same bunch of miscreants I've known since high school. I don't see any of that changing soon, and I'm not sure that I want it to change. It's abnormal, granted, but it's comfortable for the most part.
I guess the question is: "what do I want to change?" I don't have an answer just now. There's still something missing, something not quite right in the life of John Finn, and he doesn't know what it is.