Ruminations on a fall

It’s been a month this time– since my last entry and since my last fall. I wasn’t going to share this fall. I wanted to keep it to myself because it’s circumstances were mortifying enough. No need to share with the world.

But then a friend fell down the stairs. And I sent my regards, asked how she was feeling, and we had a conversation about the mental toll falls take.

I fall a lot.

Before my fall in July, I was thinking to myself, “It’s been about six months.” And I felt smug. And just now I went to my phone where my watch records hard falls and I manually enter the smaller one and I realized… for most of 2025, I have had a fall worthy of noting just about every month. And that “six months” I had in my mind– it was two months.

It felt like a lifetime.

Here’s the thing…

When something happens and a person falls, that person knows why it happened, brushes themselves off, and goes about their business. But when a scary fall happens… Well, maybe you just misjudged or your balance was off or your body didn’t do what you expected it to do… It’s not about injury. It’s about your body failing you.

It’s a special mind game when you can no longer trust your body.

Most people will experience this type of fall in their lifetime, and most of us will have more than one instance. Falls can often be the first sign that something is off.

It could be as simple as being tired, the kind that comes from not sleeping well or working too hard.

It could be blood pressure fluctuations or allergies impacting the sinuses.

It could be the failure of a certain muscle or neurological dysfunction.

And sometimes it could be a simple trip because your body couldn’t compensate as quickly as it needed to. (Or your eyesight failed and you didn’t see something you should have.)

These falls are terrifying. The mental anguish is more confusing and painful that the bruises or lacerations. The embarrassment, especially if you fall doing something simple, is so crushing.

My recent fall?

It barely left a mark on me. But, if I’m honest, it still reverberates through me even today, five days later.

Now, if you are reading this you probably know me or you’ve read some of my stuff before. I have a lot of eclectic interests so I’m not going to assume you’re here for or familiar with my disability content. But if you don’t know, I have diplegia spastic cerebral palsy, and I spend a good deal of my life as a fall risk.

I run a small publishing company putting out 10-12 books a year. I help freelance clients with their own book projects. I cover my county for a local political newsletter run by former staffers of our local daily newspaper. I write horror novels. And as of this fall, I am teaching a three-credit class at Northampton Community College.

But sometimes that’s not enough to pay the bills. So I have a part-time job in the evening.

And I fell at that job on Friday night.

In front of a LOT of people. But not one of my co-workers or supervisors saw, so that made me feel super vulnerable and invisible. On top of mortified.

And my daughter is livid, ranting about how I shouldn’t have been in a position alone where that could happen.

I’ve been under some stress, and my blood pressure has been all over the place with no logic. Allergies have been terrible. Some weeks I sleep decently, but last week I did not.

I walked about 3,000 steps in the 90 minutes before I fell, about 3.75 hours into a 4.5 hour shift. So I was certainly tired.

And even though I know and understand that I have falls, it still shakes me to the core when I have one. So, I can only imagine what it feels like when it’s not something that happens to you.

In other news, I may need to do a cat update soon. Our 14-year-old tripod cancer survivor is scheduled for euthasia Tuesday. This is the second cat I have lost in two months.