No one ever tells you how hard it is to take a shower with a broken leg and alone. But IMHO, that’s the fun part!
Ah, and I forgot to mention one more important tool for me — the trash picker. As a “broken-leg woman,” it’s essential because:
You never know what trash is on your way that you need to pick up safely.
Sometimes things fall, and picking them up is unsafe or impossible.
And the best use? IMHO, it doubles as a defense weapon against ghosts, crazy people, and bad vibes — because you never know when they’re close. 😂
So, I keep it next to my shower bench. And it finally helped me reach the top of the shower curtain, which was too far to reach otherwise. By this time, after so much hustle, I was already tired and almost ready to give up. 😂
Sitting on the bench and stepping into the tub is the most dangerous procedure I’ve done since I was once pushed to walk and threatened on a bridge by a gang member — but that’s another story, full of corruption.
I thought to myself: If I lived through that, I can live through this.Transferring my self, pivoting onto my feet, from wheelchair to the bench onto the tub — and I did it! 💪
Tips for Balance and Safety
Always stay balanced while sitting.
If your wounds aren’t fully healed, ask your doctor and if he is ok, cover the leg with a special waterproof cover protector . It’s uncomfortable, but it works.
Never, ever shower alone if your setup is plastic or slippery — emergency slip risk is real.
Keep your hands, feet, and floor dry at all times when you transfer. No mats that could slide (see my previous story).
Pivot slowly to the safe spot — like your wheelchair — don’t jump.
Shower as Therapy
Turning on the shower was my “AHA!” moment. Take a deep breath, do it, and IMHO, you can shower almost as usual with proper precautions:
Keep your leg slightly bent under the bench or lateral so the water never hits wounds directly.
Rinse thoroughly, including “hard-to-reach” parts.
Use long-handled scrubbing tools (see the previous story).
Even with warm water, your ankle will loosen up — perfect for gentle ROM exercises (if approved by your doctor).
DO NOT stand alone — I only did it because I had Siri ready to call 911 and “spying eyes” from my house.
Humor & Life Lessons
Wash your “camel” properly — yes, IMHO, it’s more than a kitty, it’s a big, fluffy camel. Rinse carefully so soap doesn’t hit the floor. Dry thoroughly while still seated. Dry your hands and feet first, then carefully put on boot while still stable on the bench.
Your life may be messy. People may be crazy. But only you control how beautiful your life can be.
Drink water.
Take a snack.
Breathe.
Rest.
Shower is therapy. Cleaning is therapy. Fun is therapy. Proof that you’re alive, no matter what or who tried to put you down.
Takeaway with you
It’s all about resilience. You must thrive and survive, and yes, you can do it.
By the way, what moisturizing body cream do you use? 😉 Next story: I’ll tell you about my creams, perfumes, and how I survived the most horrifying place imaginable — surrounded by twisted, crazy people.
For many of you, Donald Trump returning to U.S. leadership might not seem like a big deal. But for me, it’s EVERYTHING. And I need to explain why.
The last 10 years of my life have been a living hell.
If this distorted, twisted form of socialism I experienced can be called “hell,” then hell is exactly what it was.
For those of you born, raised, and educated in socialist, communist, or even free, democratic, and capitalist countries, what I’m about to say may sound outrageous.
You might not be able to imagine what a SOCIALIST HELL truly looks like—but I’ve lived it. Ten years of it.
Donald Trump, supported by Elon Musk, will save the world from this SOCIALIST HELL.
What the Democrats brought to the U.S. and spread across the world was not democracy, socialism, or even communism—it was a distorted, dirty HELL masquerading as governance.
ANd was world spread. And I lived it. 10 years!
For ten years, I endured this ideology, which twisted socialist and democratic ideas beyond recognition, stripping them of all normal real values.
It created a false reality—one where normality was twisted, and ABNORMAL values reigned supreme.
Drugs, insanity, and confusion replaced normality, stability and progress.
Transgenderism and poverty were normalized as societal standards, while truly good people were pushed down and bad actors were elevated.
In this twisted world, dirty crazy happiness was prioritized over genuine healing and care.
Words were manipulated, meanings distorted, and clarity sacrificed.
Privacy vanished, and gangs and organized crime ruled society, making the rules for the “normal” people who refused to conform to this chaos.
Survival became conditional on obedience and silence. No questions allowed. Punishments!
This is the nightmare of so-called “socialist democracy” that Trump is fighting to save the world from.
Trump and his supporters have an uphill battle ahead of them, and I pray for their success.
The dark forces that thrived over these past ten years will not disappear easily—they will continue to lurk, ready to strike in any way they can.
Their twisted ideologies have already been entrenched in laws, policies, and culture.
May God protect Trump and his allies, helping them dismantle this crazy mess that has plagued so many lives.
I will never forget these ten years of trauma—ten years of corrupted officials who were supposed to protect us but instead twisted justice, crushed hope, genuine lives and left people to suffer.
They spoke about “wokeness,” “equity,” “equality,” and “democracy,” but in reality, they brought nothing but insanity and hell.
To truly understand the pain I’ve endured, imagine a world where your life is destroyed in the name of God—not by divine will, but by EVIL disguised as good.
A world where “democracy” is a lie, replaced by a dirty, corrupted, and twisted form of socialism.
A place you once thought promised freedom, happiness, and opportunity, but instead delivered poverty, sadness, oppression, and demands for obedience.
No opportunities unless you conform. No freedom unless you surrender.
Is this the kind of world you’d want to live in? A world run by twisted values and chaos?
This is why Trump’s leadership is so critical, and why Elon Musk’s support matters.
Together, they can help rid the world of these destructive, dirty ideologies.
I am extremely happy and profoundly sad.
Happy that there is hope for change, but heartbroken as I reflect on the ten lost years of my life, wasted amidst twisted, dirty socialist values that brought nothing but despair.
Good luck, President Trump! Keep Elon close to you! He is there to protect and support you and restore the good American values and heal the world!
May God bless you and guide you to heal this world, ensuring that no delusional ideologies or twisted values ever again destroy the freedom and lives of normal, good people.
My mom never loved the pressure cooker. While most moms embraced it in the communist country where time to cook was short, food was scarce, and families were large, my mom always said NO. Even though food was good, and meals were always on time, she refused to use it.
Why? Because more than seeking an easier time during those hard days, everything she did was about us. My mom’s anxiety was always high, though she never talked about it. But that anxiety kept us safe, as best as she could.
Today, I refused to trust my gut. From morning until evening, I said NO to it. NO, I do not want to listen to you! When your mind and gut tell you something different from others, and you already know that you process things differently, you say NO!
NO to my gut today!
Because I’m too tired to deal with everything in one single day.
What would my mom do? I wish you were here, mom, to tell me what to do…and to NOT trust my guts, BUT just live!
I refused a private room arrangement because of my gut!
NO private room in a socialist country—NEVER EVER! Irina taught me that!
When I called my friends, my call rings echo from a closed apartment. It’s not a coincidence or craziness. What happened before is happening again! My gut was right when I discovered it.
Anything else is people doing their jobs for their people, and me watching them.
People are the same! Life is the same! Freedom is the same! For ALL!
What would mom do? How do you convince someone, whose priorities are different from their own kids, that pressure cooking is dangerous for everyone? The time you gain today, you can lose it ALL tomorrow, as dangerous as it can be!
My dad bought a sophisticated pressure cooker for my mom, proud of his “state class achievement.” My mom took that “achievement,” and it became the grain holder for our ducks, geese, and chickens, and the pot for their water. She transformed the “brand name” pressure cooker gift into happiness for our animals and garden.
That’s what my mom taught me.
If you don’t have time, DO NOT COOK! Cook with time and LOVE! Meals are for soul life and health. And never use a pressure cooker as sophisticated as it could be!
It’s better not to cook at all, then! LOL. Eat out!
At the Filipino corner store, a man was selling cheap jeans from a bag. I smiled. People bought them. It’s a culture—the culture of poverty! I lived it in socialism!
Pressure cookers are part of the culture of poverty, where people hurry to gain control over an uncontrollable situation, driven by poorness!
Breathe with me and stay grounded.
My mom always kept her hands on the oven door handle for 5 seconds before starting cooking. To rest. To settle. After that, the meals would follow.
Today, I didn’t trust my gut at all! But I trusted MY MOM!
Moms protect their babies and teach them through life experiences and stories.
Now, you know that your gut is right. Don’t ignore it!
I stepped inside my home and my CPTSD came back. The psychopath and its organized crime network, the dirty intelligence games on all sides, people poor, lack of freedom, control, and communism.
I was 18 years old when I read an old book typewritten illegally on a cheap paper format and manually sewn book, “Jurnalul fericirii” by Nicolae Steinhardt.
And I learned word by word these pages. Because these pages kept me alive when I refused to stay alive in any dirty and lack of freedom societies or circumstances.
Because YOUR LIFE matter, and you must stay alive.
Steinhardt was one of my mentors, my parents, my grounding when a psychopathic alienated and dogmatic society aimed to annihilate my personality and restructure my identity if I will oppose its ideology and entitlment.
I will share with you THE PAGES, that every time saved my life and keeps me going!
I hope it will help you too, as much as it helps me in the last 40 years! You keep GOD genuine in your heart and let go of anything else. YOU MUST SURVIVE!
To save your life and soul in a place without freedom is all that matters and is AT FIRST!
Nicolae Steinhardt Jurnalul fericirii / Journal of Happiness The Solutions – Political Testament
To emerge from a concentration camp universe – and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a camp, a prison, or another form of incarceration; the theory applies to any type of totalitarian product – there are (mystical) solutions.
We won’t discuss this further, as it is a consequence of selective grace by essence.
The three solutions we refer to are strictly worldly, practical in nature, and appear accessible to anyone.
In “The First Circle”, Alexander Isaievich briefly mentions it, returning to it in Volume I of “The Gulag Archipelago”. It consists, for anyone crossing the threshold of the Security or any other similar investigative body, in firmly saying to oneself: “At this moment, I am really dead. It is allowed to console oneself: it’s a pity for my youth or woe to my old age, my wife, my children, myself, my talent or my possessions, my power, my beloved, the wines I will never drink, the books I will never read, the walks I will never take, the music I will never listen to, etc. etc. etc. But something is certain and irreparable: from now on, I am a dead man.”
If one thinks thus, resolutely, he is saved. Nothing more can be done to him. He cannot be threatened, blackmailed, deceived, or tempted anymore.
Since he considers himself dead, nothing frightens him, entices him, attracts him, or seduces him. He cannot be baited anymore. Because he no longer hopes, because he has left the world, he no longer desires, holds on to, or regains anything, no longer keeps or sells his soul, peace, honor. There is no longer a currency in which the price of betrayal can be paid. However, it is required, of course, that the decision be firm, final. You declare yourself deceased, you accept the permission of death, you abolish any hope. You can regret it, like Madame d’Houdetot, you can regret it, but this moral and anticipatory suicide never fails. The risk of yielding, consenting to denunciation, or fantasizing about recognition has completely disappeared.
The second solution: Zinoviev’s It is the one found by one of the characters in the book “The Yawning Heights.” The character is a young man, presented under the allegorical nickname Zurbagiul. The solution lies in total non-adaptation to the system. Zurbagiul has no stable domicile, no proper documents, is not in the field of work; he is a vagabond, a parasite, a freeloader, and a hobo. He lives from day to day, from whatever he gets, from whatever happens, from whatever. He is dressed in rags. He works haphazardly, sometimes, when and if the opportunity arises. He spends most of his time in prisons or labor camps, sleeps wherever he can. He wanders. For nothing in the world does he enter the system, not even the most insignificant, sinful, or unengaging job. He does not even become a swineherd, not following the example of the hero of a novella by Arthur Schnitzler: that one, obsessed with the fear of responsibility, ends up as a swineherd. NO, Zurbagiul has projected himself (in existentialist style) once and for all as a permanent shelter, a ragged goat, a begging Buddhist monk, a madman for (in) freedom. Such a person, on the margins of society, is also immune: they cannot exert pressure on him, take anything from him, or offer him anything. They can always lock him up, harass him, despise him, ridicule him: but they lose. Once and for all, he has agreed to live his life according to the example and model of a perpetual night shelter. From poverty, distrust, non-seriousness, he has carved out a creed; he resembles a wild animal, a scavenger, a highwayman. He is Ferrante Palla of Stendhal. He is Zacharias Lichter of Matei Calinescu. He is a layman jurodivy, an unwavering traveler (and Wotan descending to this earth, what name may he bear? Der Wanderer), a wandering Jew.
And he’s got a mouth on him, he talks his head off, gives voice to the most dangerous anecdotes, knows no respect, takes everything lightly, says whatever comes to mind, speaks truths that others dare not whisper. He is the child from the tale of the naked king, by Andersen. He is King Lear’s jester. He is the wolf from the bold fable of La Fontaine: he has no idea about a collar. He is free, free, free.
It boils down to this: in the presence of tyranny, oppression, misery, misfortune, calamity, danger, not only do you not give up, but on the contrary, you develop an insane desire to live and fight. In March 1939, Churchill told Martha Bibescu: “There will be war. The British Empire will be pulverized. Death awaits us all. And I feel like I’m twenty years younger.”
The worse things get, the more immense the difficulties, the harder you are hit, the more surrounded or subjected to attacks you are, the less likely you see any probabilistic and rational hope, the more intense, viscous, and inextricable the gray, darkness, and sludge become, the more direct the danger, the more eager you are to fight and experience an (increasing) feeling of inexplicable and overwhelming euphoria.
You are assaulted from all sides, with infinitely stronger forces than yours: you fight. You are defeated: you defy them. You are lost: you attack. (That’s how Churchill spoke in 1940).
You laugh, you sharpen your teeth and your knife, you grow younger. Happiness tickles you, the unspeakable joy of hitting back, even if much less so. Not only do you not despair, not declare yourself defeated and overcome, but you also fully enjoy the joy of resistance, of opposition, and you experience a sensation of furious, demented joy.
This solution, of course, presupposes exceptional character strength, a military conception of life, a formidable moral tenacity of the body, a will of noble steel, and an adamantine spiritual health.
It probably also requires a sporting spirit: to enjoy the battle itself – the brawl – more than success. It is also salutary and absolute because it is based on a paradox: as they hit you harder and cause you more harm and impose increasingly unjust sufferings on you, trapping you in places more without exit, you rejoice more intensely. You strengthen yourself, you grow younger! Churchill’s solution is identified with Vladimir Bukovsky’s solution.
Bukovsky recounts that when he received his first summons to the KGB headquarters, he couldn’t close an eye all night. Naturally, the reader of his memoirs will say that it couldn’t have been otherwise, that’s only natural; uncertainty, fear, emotion.
But Bukovsky continues: “I couldn’t sleep out of impatience. I could hardly wait for the day to come, to be in front of them, to tell them everything I think about them, and to penetrate them like a tank. I couldn’t imagine greater happiness. That’s why he didn’t sleep: not out of fear, worry, or emotion. But out of impatience to shout the truth in their faces and to penetrate them like a tank!”
No more extraordinary words have ever been spoken or written in the world. And I wonder – I don’t claim it’s as I say, not at all, I just wonder, I can’t help but wonder – if perhaps this universe, with all its swarms of galaxies each containing thousands or millions of galaxies each with billions of stars and at least a few billion planets around these stars, if perhaps all these spaces, distances, and spheres measured in light-years, parsecs, and billions of thousands of miles, all this worminess of matter, stars, comets, satellites, pulsars, quasars, black holes, cosmic dust, meteors, I don’t know what else, all the eras, all the eons, all the times and all the space-time continua and all the Newtonian or relativistic astrophysics came into being and exist only so that these words of Bukovsky could be expressed.
Conclusion All three solutions are certain and without error.
Other solutions to emerge from a boundary situation, from a concentration camp universe, from the nets of a Kafkaesque process, from a domino game, labyrinth, or interrogation room, from fear and panic, from any rat race, from any phenomenal nightmare I do not know to exist. Only these three.
However, any one of them is good, sufficient, and liberating.
Take heed: Solzhenitsyn, Zinoviev, Churchill, Bukovsky.
Consented, assumed, anticipated, provoked death; indifference and audacity; courage accompanied by insane joy. You are free to choose.
But you should realize that – speaking worldly, humanly – it is very doubtful that you will find another way to face the iron circle – which is largely also chalk (see Camus’ State of Siege: the foundation of dictatorship is a phantasm: fear) – other than these.
You may protest, perhaps, considering that the solutions imply a form of life equivalent to death, or worse than death, or involving the risk of physical death at any moment. That’s true.
Are you surprised? Because you haven’t read Igor Shafarevich yet, because you still haven’t found out that totalitarianism is not so much the consolidation of an economic, biological, or social theory as it is mainly the manifestation of an attraction to death. And the secret of those who cannot fit into the totalitarian pit is simple: they love life, not death. But who, Alone, has conquered death? He who trampled death underfoot.
