I wish...

I am a lucky girl. I am lucky to have an amazing/wonderful/loving/supportive family, loving friends, and a pretty blessed life so far. But at times I wish to be “normal,” whatever “normal” may be. Normal in the sense that my life is not consumed with doctor appointments, daily calls to a paralegal who does not call me back, surgeries every 4 to 6 months, injections of medicine that makes me feel horrible for a week and only ok for about a month, and daily doses of pain medicine that make me sick and nonfunctioning. I miss the little things that I once took for granted. I wish I could carry my bags full of groceries in both hands, instead of loading the bags on to one hand and struggling to make it from where I parked my car to my front door. I wish I could wake up at 7am and work a normal nine to five job and earn a salary that I could live on (I am currently receiving 2/3rds of what I was making in 2000). I wish I could pour my soymilk into my cereal with my right hand and not with my left hand. I wish I could only see a doctor when I am sick, not having three or more doctor appointments a month. I wish I could do an intense arm work out with five pound weights and finish up with a set of push-ups. I wish people could feel the pain that I experience just for a brief moment so they could understand what I feel on a daily basis. I wish people would keep their stupid comments and jokes about me being “lazy” and “using the system” and referring to my bi-monthly checks as “sitting on your couch money” to themselves. And the biggest wish of all, I wished I did not wake up in pain, have pain all day, and dream about my pain while I am sleeping. Honestly, I would give anything to have just one day that is pain free.

Don’t get me wrong things could be worse, that I know. I could have been injured more severely. I might not know why my life went in the direction it did on October 4th, 2000, but it did. I use to take life and other things for granted. For a long time after my injury I would get mad because the life I wanted was not the life that I was experiencing. When people would tell me “everything happens for a reason,” I wanted to punch them in the face because they weren’t going through what I was going through. But then I realized everything DOES happen for a reason and having a “victim mentality” is not going to get me anywhere.