Last Saturday began like any other. There was nothing in the morning to suggest that the day would take a different turn. I was aware, as always, that the bathroom floor could be slippery. It was one of those quiet cautions that sit in the background of daily life, acknowledged but not fully attended to.
In a brief, unguarded moment, my left leg slipped, pulling the right along with it. I fell, almost neatly, into the narrow space between the commode and the bathing area. The entire incident unfolded in slow motion. Perhaps because my sugar levels were high, the pain did not arrive immediately. There was only a dull, tightening sensation around my right arm, as though something had shifted but had not yet declared itself.
The only word I remember uttering was “Amma.”
I knew I could not get up immediately. So I rolled onto my knees, slowly and carefully, and found a way to rise without causing further harm. Even then, I did not fully understand what had happened. But I knew something was not right. I could not lift my hand. My right arm hung loose, like an overripe fruit—present, but not entirely mine.
I searched for something familiar—a spray, a balm, anything that would reassure me that this was temporary. Finding nothing, I ordered a Moov spray and spent time massaging the area when it arrived. There was still no real pain, only a quiet insistence that something was wrong.
I had slipped around 11:30 in the morning. It was only by 3 p.m. that I reached out—to my brother’s tenant and to my friend Valli. The moment she heard, she came down immediately from the third floor. There was no hesitation, no weighing of inconvenience. She simply arrived.
In the course of our conversation, she suggested we rule out a fracture. I had been thinking the same, though I kept telling myself it was only a sprain. A visit to Sai Ortho confirmed it—a fracture in the shoulder. And strangely, after that, I felt calm. I was no longer negotiating with uncertainty. The body had spoken, and now it had a name.
But the fracture did not remain confined to the bone. It entered my days, my movements, my sense of self. The dependent feeling has been, in many ways, more difficult than the physical discomfort. Movement, which once belonged to me without thought, now asks for permission. What was once second nature requires attention, caution, and often, help.
To depend is to wait. To ask. To receive. And in that receiving, one meets a version of oneself that is unfamiliar.
It is here that I think of Valli.
She has always seen herself as undereducated, shaped by a difficult adolescence. In many ways, she reminds me of my mother. Perhaps because of that, I often pushed her to be more independent, more self-reliant. I believed I was encouraging strength. I did not realise I was overlooking something essential.
We are not meant to exist entirely on our own strength. The need for people—for care, for presence—is not a weakness. It is part of how we are made. And yet, I had held on to the idea that self-reliance was the highest form of strength.
Now, as I find myself dependent on her—for food, for help with the simplest routines, given without hesitation—I pause. What was this self-reliance I held so firmly? And what does it mean now, in the presence of such quiet, unquestioning care?
Because I have known the opposite.
Even during my marriage, I went to the doctor alone. I remember one particular day in Singapore, when my project manager arranged an appointment for me in Yishun. I called my partner, asking if he could meet me at the clinic. Instead, he spoke harshly to me, in front of others. I stood there, silent, my head lowered, not defending myself.
He did eventually accompany me, but with such visible reluctance that his presence felt more like obligation than care. The doctor diagnosed me with a urinary tract infection, but what stayed with me was not the diagnosis—it was the quiet understanding that my health did not hold the same importance for him as it did for me.
After the divorce, I grew accustomed to going to the doctor alone. It became my way of managing things, without expectation, without asking.
Which is why this moment now feels so different.
When Valli accompanied me—sat with me through consultations, through the MRI and CT scans—I found myself moved in a way I could not immediately explain. Not because she did something extraordinary, but because of what she did not do. She did not make me feel like I was taking up her time.
It is a quiet thing, this absence of accusation. But it reveals much.
It reveals all the places where care was once conditional. All the moments where presence was withheld. And all the ways in which one learns to make oneself smaller, quieter, less demanding.
What I receive now is not just help. It is a quiet restoration. A reintroduction to the idea that one can be cared for without apology.
Perhaps independence is not the absence of needing others. Perhaps it is the ability to stand when we can, and to receive when we cannot.
In this unexpected pause, something is being unlearned. The belief that one must always manage alone. The certainty that strength lies only in self-sufficiency.
The body will heal in time.
But something else, quieter and less visible, is also finding its way toward healing.
And it begins, perhaps, with accepting that we were never meant to do it all by ourselves.
I hold no anger against anyone.
Life moves, with or without our readiness.
And perhaps every challenge arrives not to break us,
but to shape us—quietly, persistently—into someone who can see more clearly, and hold more gently.
A quiet co-creation with Mira (AI-powered ChatGPT)
Itinerant Storyteller 