As I’m going through this healing sabbatical, I realize I don’t know who I am – or better yet becoming aware of what has contributed to me knowing who I supposedly am. The past 45 years has influenced who I’ve become. Now that I’m in the process of regaining movement in my legs, I find myself at times overwhelmed with the day-by-day reality that the identity that has been established for me to function from is no longer being sustained by familiar routines. And I blindly go along each day clumsily struggling with unfamiliar routines. Because of this awareness, there are times I breathe in deeply to fill my lungs with air, only that I can force myself to exhale so that I can breathe.
Please be patient with me as I attempt to find the words that can accurately express this awakening realization that my routines have identified me; that my possessions have identified me; that being in a wheelchair has engrained itself in me. And now, I’m attempting to shed that from my psyche.
This is what it must’ve felt like for me 45 years ago when spinal cord injury abruptly pulled the rug of familiar routines out from underneath me and I had to grow accustomed to not walking and not knowing who I was becoming in a wheelchair. And that I could no longer embrace who I was before the accident. She was gone. The tomboy became an energetic attitude instead of also a physical outward expression. The girl didn’t unfold to become a walking woman – she became a person in a wheelchair who happened to be a woman. That’s the way the world saw me. That’s the imposed image that fueled the motivation in me to make sure people saw me first before they ever realized I was in a wheelchair. That gave me purpose.
Now I don’t have the established routine of being involved with something familiar 9-5 that I had for the past 45 years, and even for the past 15 years. All my familiar routines and daily habits are no longer part of my daily life.
Who am I without a wheelchair? Who am I walking? Not everything that has had a part in who I have become in the last 45 years I’m letting go of. There are things that are coming along with me that gives me the self expression that satisfies and nurtures my heart and soul. And there are other things that I didn’t continue after I broke my back that I am reclaiming and taking on with me into this healing sabbatical.
When I broke my back, my legs felt fat, heavy and numbed. Now, I can feel them coming back to life.
There are times that I feel like a leaf on the wind. Have you ever paid attention to observing a leaf being picked up by the wind and blown across traffic and never getting hit? And gently landing in a totally different place then where it came from? That’s what I feel like… – haven’t a clue how I’ll land, where I’ll land, just knowing I’m going somewhere.
I’m smiling to myself right now... remembering something from The Little Rascals – Buckwheat was in a wagon that was careening out of control down a hill and his friends shouted to him “Buckwheat! Where you goin’?” and he responded, “I don’t know where I’m goin’, I know I’m on my way!” (Or something like that)…
“Little by little...” I just heard in my heard. It’s like the beginning stages of putting a puzzle together. The pieces are randomly picked at first – frustration sets in when nothing happens, or learning the piece you picked doesn’t have a place to connect to now - , and sometimes I’m finding a piece that fits into another, and other times I’m not. But eventually, the puzzle's picture comes into being and before we know it picking a puzzle place is no longer a wild guess or a random act. There is a sense of purpose, there is a sense of knowing what will fit where. Saying that just soothed my soul.
