face fall

A year ago yesterday, I stepped off the back of a bus around 1 a.m. after a night out at the Blue Moon, and faceplanted onto cement. I scraped up both knees, both palms, smashed my upper lip and cheek and bruised a cheekbone. Too stubborn to go to the hospital, I cleaned up as best I could and fell into bed, and when I awoke a few hours later and stumbled into the bathroom and beheld my swollen face, immediately fainted. I went home to shower, websurf about concussions, and stew; finally, I limped down to immediate care, where an older doctor with an accent sat beside me and told me very seriously to go to the hospital--not in a bus, or a taxi, but in an actual human friend's car just in case I blacked out en route. Everything checked out--no concussion or breaks, just road rash, bruising and some serious scrapes--I lost a week of work and of course my pride.
Did I learn anything from the experience?
I know now that true friends are there when you wake up the next day, they sit with you in the ER and take you to the store for frozen peas and jumbo size boxes of bandages. They buy you straws so you can drink wine without moving your cut lip. For every stranger who callously stares, there's a kind grocery clerk who takes you aside and asks, "Did someone hurt you?"
Anyway, a year later, there's still a tiny bit of scar tissue on my upper lip, a reminder each day as I swipe on lip gloss that not everything heals 100% and every experience leaves a mark.
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Today's music for writing is local talent Erik Blood (featuring a friend of a friend on vocals):