One Boot One Sad Party No You | Call Me Unfiltered

This piece — One Boot One Sad Party No You — is not about parties at all. It’s about the silence after grief, the kind of loneliness that makes even a single boot feel heavier than it should. It’s a story of anger, absence, and the strange rituals we invent when someone doesn’t show up.

 

Four Months, One Boot, and the Saddest Party You’ll Never Be Invited To

I’ve decided to celebrate the 20th of this month.

Don’t ask me which day of the week that even is — my calendar brain retired sometime around the accident, and quite frankly, weeks feel like IKEA instructions now: too many pieces, none of them fitting. But the 20th will mark four months since I wrecked my foot, and that seems like as good a reason as any to celebrate.

Not because recovery has been glorious. It hasn’t.
Not because life feels brighter. It doesn’t.
But because sometimes you’ve got to invent a celebration out of thin air, otherwise the sheer monotony of pain and waiting will eat you alive.

Before the Accident, Life Was “Rosy” (and by Rosy, I Mean Hell in Soft Lighting

Let’s not romanticize the before times. Life wasn’t “good” before I tripped into this chapter. Life was rosy — if by rosy you mean a solid decade of grief, endless fatigue, and living like some badly coded bot who keeps showing up to work even though it forgot its password to joy.

Then came the accident, which managed to take away the one small ritual that balanced pain with joy: walking Zoe.

Zoe, my moronic little four-legged roommate, who in her infinite dog wisdom believes I’m the moron. She’s not wrong. We’re probably both idiots. She drags, I limp. Together, we look like a parody of fitness influencers who never made it past warm-up.

Walking her was therapy wrapped in chaos. It was the one thing I did that made pain bearable. And losing that felt like losing the last bit of freedom I had managed to negotiate with grief.

A Hundred Gloomy Things I Could Say (But Won’t)

The truth is, I could sit here and catalogue every miserable detail of the past four months:

• The clots that shouldn’t be there.

• The boot that looks like orthopedic cosplay.

• The daily negotiation with stairs, chairs, and dignity.

I could write about all of it — and trust me, I have drafts. But here’s the thing no one tells you: grief and gloom get boring after a while. They repeat themselves, like a bad song on shuffle.

Even suffering loses its dramatic flair when you rehearse it long enough.

So instead of another sad monologue, I’ve decided to throw a party.

The Saddest Celebration in History

Will there be cake? Probably not. Unless Zoe convinces me chicken cake is a thing.
Will there be champagne? Possibly. Even sparkling water might do the trick — bubbles are festive enough.
Will there be dancing? Absolutely not. Unless you count the shuffle of one half-healed foot trying to find its way out of an air-cast boot.

I’ll probably celebrate by finally chucking the boot — maybe out the window like a bouquet. Whoever catches it wins… I don’t know, a reminder that at least their legs still work?

But here’s the catch: sad or not, it’ll still be a celebration. Four months down. Four months of limping, swearing, and pretending progress is linear when it’s actually shaped like a bad doodle. Four months of learning that “self-soothing” sometimes looks like laughing at how pathetic the party is.

Why Bother?

Because this is more than I’ve celebrated in years.
Because marking a date, even arbitrarily, feels like reclaiming some power over time.
Because Zoe deserves to see me toast something other than painkillers.

And maybe because, deep down, I’m starting to believe that even sad little celebrations count. Even half-broken bodies deserve a party.

So here’s to the 20th. Four months. One boot. A dog who still thinks I’m an idiot. And the tiniest, strangest toast to survival.

It won’t look like joy. But maybe it’s the closest I’ve come in a decade.

• If you’ve read The Addiction to Being Liked, you’ll know this isn’t the first time I’ve written about how silence can sting louder than noise.

• I’ve unpacked grief before in Cut the Crap, but One Boot One Sad Party No You is its own uninvited guest.