On days like this I hardly have strength to go on. So I cry, ask my parents for comfort, and after the tears have finally drained me, I sleep.
It’s strange, really. The thoughts aren’t new ones, I don’t blame anyone, and neither does it last very long. It comes, shakes me to the core, and goes, waiting to strike again, hidden from my view. It’s only recently that it has started to come this often.
In less than a month I will have lived for five years with my injury. My routine has hardly eased over the years; in fact it’s only gotten longer. I keep pushing my boundaries, breaking them and then working towards breaking new boundaries yet again. The cycle hasn’t stopped yet. Sometimes it feels like it might never, but I’m still holding on. Who even am I working this hard for, if not myself? And don’t we all deserve some hard work just for ourselves, though the definition of ‘some’ is different for everyone?
It is tough. Heartbreaking. Sometimes devastating too. I’ve been under a lockdown of my own far longer than this pandemic has forced us to - everyone who knows me knows this. Of course, it has its happy times. For me, these are far more in number than the sad ones, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t break me from time to time. My efforts to regain my sensation and motor control take up so much of my time everyday I am sometimes afraid to think what I’ll do after this is all over, when I will finally have enough time and I will still complain about having too little of it. (That, however, would be because I’ll just keep wanting to do so many things all the time!) So then why does it scare me when it should be a beacon of light, a goal, one of the best case scenarios for me? Simply because I’ve longed for it so much now, yet been involved in doing something so far away from it, that I fear it might take me years to get used to that kind of freedom. The one where I can just run about if I want.
I am afraid, I am exhausted, I just want to lie down for a while, and I will.
And after all is said and done, I will fight again.
