A year and a half ago, my world was turned upside down. Five months ago, my heart was shattered. A month and half ago, what was left was shaken apart. A month ago, my foundation shifted. And during all of that, I have fought to keep going, to keep living, to get what I needed to survive....
I should recap;
November 2012: My legs gave up (well, one gave up and the other one was tired of pulling more than its own weight) and I was told the best thing I could do was stop running. My leg has progressively have gotten worse. I was finally given a paragraph diagnosis a little over a month ago, but I still find it to be incomplete.
December 2013: My brother died in an accident, throwing me into a desperate attempt to reconcile the new world I found myself in... still working on that and going to be for a long time.
March 2014: I was fired from the job I had worked for the last 8 years under the guise of taking the art department in a new direction. Can't say I buy that, but at least with the unemployment checks (that I fought for a few weeks to even get started), I have been able to look for a new job and try to start up my freelance career again. I even finally started an Etsy shop for the art and designs that I do. Although, now my fun new fights are trying to get the State of California to insure me aaaaand find somewhere with a charity program to do something with my leg.
April 2014: My roommate decided she doesn't want a roommate anymore. Leaving me looking for somewhere else to live. The shining light here comes in the form of researching low income housing and discovering disabled buildings... there's a little dance in the hopes that I'll be able to have my very own space and as an added bonus, be able to roll my wheelchair right into said very own space rather than leaving it in the car and using my crutches to get up the stairs. Or heaving the wheelchairs up and down the few steps when they need to come out of the car or go back in. To have the choice of using my chair in the house rather than the horrible limping because I refuse to use my crutches in the house (because I'm stubborn like that..)
My therapist keeps commenting that I have tremendous patience, and I would like to put an end to that thought...
I would like nothing more than to throw my phone across the room after another frustrating phone call or to scream at the people that are not helping me on the other end of the line. To shake the people I was supposed to trust and ask them what the hell they were thinking. To decide I just don't need the wheelchairs or the crutches and stubborn my way down the road. Most of all, I long to tell my brother to his face that he's an asshole for leaving us, no matter how noble his intentions had been. And at the end of the day, sometimes even first thing in the morning, I am tired of this fight I have been in for far too long.
However.
I have accepted that my story is unfolding exactly as it is supposed to and I still firmly believe that everything happens for a reason.
That's not to say I'm going to sit back and let it do its thing.. I'm still going to fight for every step I get to take, make someone help me or tell me how to help myself, and let go of those people that were apparently only supposed to be in my life for a short time. And I will continue to tell myself that while all those things I listed above would make me feel better for a moment, they wouldn't do anything except leave me with a broken phone, someone that doesn't want to help me even more than when they answered the phone, not many answers, much more pain, and.... well, calling my brother an asshole would make me feel much better and I would be rewarded with the ever-famous smirk that tells me he knows that and all my complaining isn't going to change a damn thing that he did.
In conclusion, it's not so much patience as finding enough peace in the acceptance and holding onto enough stubborn to keep doing what I need to do. To keep trying to glue all the pieces of my world back together despite not trusting that it won't get broken again.. but hoping to be able to recognize it more and more as it goes back together. To find that shining moment on the other side of this war torn, full-of-twists-and-turns trail I'm on right now.
And while frustration pushes me onward, I don't want it to rule me.. I prefer it to be a tool rather than a personality trait.
At least I'm getting really good at taking deep breaths and counting to 10......
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