CONTROL...FROM THIS SIDE.

“Lying there in the dark with the uncanny taste of a peach from some phantom orchard fading in his mouth. He thought if he lived long enough the world at last would all be lost. Like the dying world the newly blind inhabit, all of it slowly fading from memory.”

- Cormac McCarthy

So if you’re born with a disability or a mobility/intellectual impairment of some sort, you actually don’t know what it’s really like to be able to walk, to be able to write, talk, hear, or see. So if you really think about it, in a strange way, it’s somewhat better that way because you don’t have the disheartening feeling of having lost something. Unfortunately, I do. When I was younger, I was everything a “normal” child was—running, jumping, dancing, playing. Now I’ve lost that. Now I’m in a wheelchair. Now I’m experiencing living/“inhabiting” in a new world. I’ve been living in this new world for so long now, that what used to be is like Cormac McCarthy’s “dying world” to me and what it used to be to me is now “slowly fading from memory”.

I’m not telling you this to cry out and complain about my “oh so hard life”. I’m not looking for sympathy, but rather hoping to lend you some insights…from this side. That is the side that knows directly what it’s like to have and to lose. And I know that many of you already know that feeling in many different ways…So what gives me the right to lend you some insights on this? I’m here just to tell you about it in my way—from my perspective. There are no words to possibly fully express to you how depressingly daunting it is to wake up in the morning, and immediately reach for your walker because you innately know that you can’t do it on your own. To brace yourself when you bend down to pick up your pencil that rolled onto the floor because you can’t just reach over to grab it, you might fall. you can’t just reach over to grab it?? What!?, Seriously!? When reaching over to grab something is a privilege, that gives me that right to lend you some insights on this. Please just look at your everyday daily lives. The most “simple” things you do. And imagine a negative force that is taking over your body disabling you to do those things. Don’t willingly allow negative forces in your life. Self-Control. It’s the only thing in this world over which we have complete power. We all have the innate ability to CHOOSE what we want to do or to say. For me, and many others in similar situations, that self-control is taken away. Once you allow it to be dictated by an outside factor (i.e: drugs, bullies), you will suffer the consequences of it’s harsh reality. I know what it’s like to have that control taken, unwillingly; and I know how awful and damaging it can make you [and subsequently others around you] feel, therefore; in my life, I try to maintain as much control as possible…and you should too. That’s why “choice” is so important. In all circumstances, a person should have the opportunity to make their own choices…thinking otherwise means that you have the same characteristics of a negative force. So that’s why I’m going to leave you with this inspirational insight: Think about all of your decisions…to ensure they're the right ones.