Taking My Life Back

When I was a kid, and I looked towards the future, I didn’t see much. I saw wheelchairs, doctors treatments, and lots of medication. I saw my family having to sacrifice everything, changing their way of life to accommodate what my life was going to be, like building a home that was wheelchair accessible.

That view of my future began to change. When I got to the Cleveland Clinic I learned how to live with CRPS. I learned how to control the  pain in my life, rather than the  pain controlling the way I live my life. My time there was hard, dark, and scary as I tried to figure out how I was going to live. When I came home, I had to adapt to a completely new atmosphere. I had to be around people who looked at me and thought I was fine, just because I could walk, they would congratulate me, but they didn’t understand that the fight wasn’t over. However, I saw myself standing next to my peers doing things that they were doing. Maybe I was doing them slower, and maybe I wasn’t doing them quite as well, but I was doing it. That’s the moment I found hope. Hope in the fact that if I work hard, if I put the time and energy into my health, I can live a life just like the people around me. Granted, I’m going to have to work twice as hard to keep up with everyone, but it will definitely be worth it, and it has.

Nine years later, I am living a life I thought was unreachable at one point. I am a full-time student, I am a Kilgore College Rangerette, I am a daughter, I am a sister, I am a friend, and I am a leader. I do all of these things for the price of working hard and being in a little pain, well, a lot of pain. But I don’t do it alone, I have my family, my friends, my teammates, and more mentors than I could possibly ask for. They make it possible. They give me hope. They give me faith in tomorrow and hope for my future.