Time is a precious, fleeting commodity. We want to bottle it and keep it forever. The problem is that every tick-tock of the clock is a piece of life’s sand through the bend in the hourglass.
Time becomes the thing that reveals ugly truths about ourselves. Things we may not notice at first—or might not want to accept.
I realized time’s trick when I had to go to physical therapy every day, had difficulty holding things in my hands, and couldn’t even hold my head up for five minutes. I didn’t have nearly as much independence as I would’ve liked to have, and knowing my situation wasn’t likely to change fueled my desire to push forward.
I was around six or seven years old when everything in my orbit started to make sense. My disability was the sole reason why I didn’t have complete freedom. It wasn’t a matter of out-working everyone else around me to be comfortable. It wasn’t even a situation where everything I did was met with questions like, “Can she really do that on her own?” or my least favorite of them all, “Did you do that for her?”
If anything, I needed to rise above other people’s opinions about what I could or couldn’t do. A shadow of doubt had been cast. I knew three things to be true up to this point. I wasn’t like everyone else, I wasn’t going to make excuses for myself, and, most importantly, the world wasn’t going to hand me whatever I wanted.
I wasn’t quite sure what else to expect from the world at such a young age other than having confused, almost mesmerized stares drift in my direction. Even so, I felt certain that being spoon-fed was not on the list of things to anticipate. I did, however, have a budding passion for writing that started peeking through. It would eventually become one of the greatest assets of my life and provide the divine key to my independence.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t looking for handouts to fill any voids I had in the meantime. Nor was I looking to impress anyone by trying to be as free and independent as my body would allow me to be. I simply wanted to experience the freedom of self-discovery. It was something that innately applied to my understanding of my diagnosis of cerebral palsy, so I wanted to see how I could apply it to other aspects of my life.
I also wanted a fair shot to mold myself into who and what I wanted to be. I didn’t want to stay in the box society said I was supposed to be in. At the same time, however, I didn’t want to be treated differently than anyone else. There was always a delicate balance as I got older. Ironically enough, my cerebral palsy slowly became the equalizer in all of this.
I needed to let go of my own insecurities about who or what I was.
I needed to focus on the one thing that seemed to be rearing its head: my creativity. It had always been there in quiet, subtle ways—particularly in the fact that my disability made it difficult for me to speak. That, in turn, meant I wasn’t being understood the way I wanted to be.
I had all the crayons, coloring books, glue and silly putty a kid could ever want. They kept my mind occupied for a while and even gave me a sense of freedom, but those vibes never seemed to be stronger or mightier than what I was feeling inside.
It got to the point where I’d had enough—enough of the doubt, the cold stares, the redundant questions. All of it. I knew then that I could no longer keep my love of creativity bottled up inside. It had become somewhat of a necessity at this point. So, I started writing. And writing.
And writing some more. It gave a genuine opportunity to break free from everything that was designed to hold me down. I loved how it made me feel, and I’d be stupid to let it go.
I didn’t think of any of this as society’s way of saying, “OK, it’s time to grow up!” I saw it as an opportunity to mentally compensate for my lack of independence. If I couldn’t be independent in my body, I was going to do everything in my power to be independent in my mind. Having done that through my writing and good old-fashioned hard work, it’s ironic now to think I still don’t have the independence I so yearn for. That is the truth—and when the truth becomes the headline of all of my stories, I know it’s time to turn to a new page.
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