Choices

You have a choice, you can choose not to live with the disability, it can be taken from you, but if you do that, you will take away everything you have learned from it too, you will change the person you are at the core.

I couldn’t even comprehend what I was being told, who held such power? Something felt wrong, and I was not going to be tempted as hard as it was dealing with everything I had endured in the last eighteen months, I could not just wipe it all away, including the people who had helped me.

If it sounds to good to be true, it is.

The words the wisdom, played again and again in my mind.

You’re a fool if you don’t take this offer!

The voice shouted, an angry voice, a voice that sounded full of hate.

Don’t be tempted, temptation will be your downfall.

I sighed, wondering where the angry voice was coming from, and why he sounded so angry, or was the voice a she, I really could not say.

You endured so much, don’t you want to erase all the pain, don’t you want to be whole again.

I stared down at legs that had a mind of their own, legs I fought to move the way I wanted them to, but who was this invisible voice to say I was less than whole, as if walking differently, somehow made me less than whole, who was going to say otherwise, who had that right?

Who defines whole anyway? Who has the right to say I am less than because I’m disabled?

Eighteen months ago, an accident had changed my life, the doctors had said I would never walk again, but I had, it was anything but graceful and I required forearm crutches or a standing walker. I could not walk for long periods of time, but I was walking, even if it was like a baby learning to take her first steps.

I had fought, and people had fought right along with me, my best friend, my parents, cousins, aunts and uncles and people who had been strangers to me before the accident. No matter if this being had the ability to make me whole again, but who was to say I was not whole now? Did properly working legs make one whole?

You should really take this gift, it would make your life so much easier.

© Michelle R Kidwell

2020, 2022